Anyone who reads Lord Darzi’s report on the National Health Service in detail will see that he says very little about social care. To be fair, Lord Darzi acknowledges that: “It is impossible to understand what has been happening in the NHS without understanding what has happened to social care, although social care is outside the remit of this investigation”.
So, all we get in 163 pages of report is seven paragraphs and one chart which examine how social care interacts with the NHS. This is strange; given that the report is littered with references to the ‘Health and Social Care Act’ one might think that government would have got more for its money by asking Lord Darzi to give them the bigger picture by widening his remit to include both the NHS and social care.
Baron Darzi of Denham is a surgeon, and he does a very professional job of dissecting and exploring the internal maladies of the NHS and he identifies many causative factors. But he gives insufficient weight to the main factor – the lack of engagement with social care – and barely mentions it in his list of remedies. No criticism of Lord Darzi is intended: he has given us a comprehensive run-down of what ails the NHS, which is what he was asked to do. Rather, one suspects that he was asked to soft-pedal the social care aspect. After all, this government has gone very quiet in recent weeks on its plans for social care. Indeed, the most troubling aspect of this government is its lack of candour, preferring to present faits accomplis in preference to opening issues to public debate.
So, with Kier Starmer sitting on his hands, the Darzi report is yet another missed opportunity for moving towards social care reform.
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