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The UK government is failing to coordinate and track progress on its £1.7 billion plan to improve the quality of English social care over the next decade, the independent public spending watchdog has found.
In a critical report, the National Audit Office said on Friday that more than £1 billion of the budget had already been reallocated to address “other social care priorities”.
It added that only £729 million should be spent between 2022 and 2025 on a healthcare system that remains under “significant pressure”.
The government plan, published in December 2021, promised to boost workforce skills and help older and disabled people stay independent for longer.
In its report, the NAO found that the Department of Health and Social Care had not yet put in place an “overarching program to coordinate its reforms, making it difficult to know whether it is on track to achieve its objectives”.
Campaigners and health leaders have warned that the sector is under enormous pressure and urgent action is needed to tackle the sector’s devastating workforce crisis.
A plan to cap the amount an individual in England would have to pay for personal social care was postponed for at least two years by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last year.
The policy, which has been in law since 2014, is judged by experts to be essential in tackling the risk of an individual facing catastrophic healthcare costs.
The government “still has a long way to go”, says Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, which is scrutinizing Whitehall spending.
“DHSC needs a long-term plan to realize its vision. It needs to understand whether it is on the right track and whether its activities are actually improving people’s lives,” she said.
The Department of Health said the government “remained committed to reform”, adding that it was investing up to £700m this year and subsequently making major improvements to the adult social care system”.
Meanwhile, waiting times for routine hospital treatments in England reached record levels in September, with more than a million patients waiting for more than one procedure, according to official figures released on Thursday.
Patients were waiting for almost 7.8 million appointments, up from 7.7 million in August, according to NHS England data.
The figures came as a blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has promised to cut waiting lists ahead of the next general election.
A wave of strikes in the NHS since December last year has increased the pressures already facing the health service during the winter months and led to the cancellation of around 1.2 million operations and appointments.
Hunt this week rejected calls for £1 billion in extra funding for the NHS in England to help ease pressure on hospitals in the winter months. So far, the Treasury has only allocated £100m of new money.
NHS England on Wednesday appeared to signal a retreat from its ambition to focus on reducing the number of patients waiting for elective care. In a letter to hospital chiefs, it instead encouraged trusts to spend resources on “high priority” matters.
Professor Nicola Ranger, chief nurse at the Royal College of Nursing, warned on Thursday that the government had “lost control of NHS waiting times”.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, national medical director of the NHS, said he expected “another challenging winter in healthcare”.
The Ministry of Health said the government remains committed to reducing waiting lists.