Mayor Dave Writes: Health and Care Integration Needed, Not Government Cuts

Sustainability for health and social care services can only be achieved by a real commitment to integration, not by the government's chronic underfunding and a crude focus on cuts and closures. That's the message of a forceful recent column by Mayor Dave Hodgson in the Times and Citizen newspaper.

Here's the text of the article:

In a recent interview, the head of NHS England Simon Stevens declared any extra government money in the coming years should not go to his organisation but to councils for social care.

This may seem like an unusual statement for Mr Stevens to make, but really it is only a statement of the obvious: Councils are massively under-funded and have been plunged into a funding crisis by government cuts and a rising need for services.

In Bedford Borough Council's case, for example, our main government grant is falling from £42 million in 2013 to £5.8 million in 2019, while an ageing population means more and more people need social care support.

What Mr Stevens knows only too well is that chronic under-funding of councils' social care services only puts more strain on health services overall. That's why it's crucial that local councils are at the heart of planning for future health services. Indeed, a report commissioned by Bedford Borough Council identified that implementing a system which integrates health and social care services can make services sustainable for the future. This would avoid the need for damaging cuts and closures such as the appalling proposal by the Beds and MK Healthcare Review to close maternity services at Bedford Hospital.

That review has been superseded by the Sustainability and Transformation Plan, but that has pledged to 'build on' the Healthcare Review's work. That is a real concern; the Healthcare Review work had a crude, blunt focus on simply cutting hospital services rather than seeking sustainable ways to run those services. Its work was flawed and should be scrapped altogether. I told Simon Stevens himself as much in a recent meeting I had with him, and I will keep making this case as we continue the fight to save key services at Bedford Hospital.

Mayor Dave Hodgson