Sir Ed Davey says the government's three-year delay on the final report to social care reform is "not good enough". The Liberal Democrat leader adds, "there is a huge shortage of care workers", and is calling for a £2-an-hour increase to the minimum wage for all workers in the sector. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, we need an urgent action on the waiting list.
00:02It's a huge problem.
00:04And we'll look at these proposals.
00:05But there are two things missing,
00:07as far as Liberal Democrats are concerned.
00:09General election, we put health and social care
00:11right at the centre of our campaign.
00:14And I don't see the action we need
00:15on GPs, which are critical to sorting out waiting
00:19lists, or on social care.
00:21Indeed, we heard from the government
00:23that they were delaying action on social care for three years.
00:27That's not good enough.
00:29And without that action on social care, in particular,
00:31as well as GPs, I don't think we'll
00:33see the waiting lists come down.
00:35We do need to get more care workers.
00:38There's a shortage, a huge shortage,
00:40of care workers in care homes and domiciliary care.
00:44And we've argued for a higher special minimum wage
00:48for care workers, £2 an hour higher
00:50than the national living wage, to start
00:52tackling that shortage.
00:54But we've got some other ideas about helping family carers
00:56to do the vast bulk of caring in our society.
00:59We put forward ideas.
01:01We would support a cross-party commission.
01:05And we're going to engage with that constructively.
01:07But it's got to report far more quickly than the government
01:10are currently proposing.
01:11It should do its work by the end of this year.
01:14You cut any waiting times best by making sure
01:17GPs are there in greater numbers,
01:19so people don't go to A&E in the first place.
01:22And you make sure that people are
01:24able to be discharged more quickly by having better care.
01:28So the Liberal Democrat prescription
01:30for many aspects of the health service
01:32is to make sure you get that primary care, particularly
01:34the GPs, and you get that social care and family care support.
01:38That will take so much pressure off hospitals,
01:41whether it's on the waiting list for surgery
01:43or whether it's at A&E departments.
01:45We do not support privatising the NHS.
01:48But you can use private contractors where that helps.
01:51GPs, after all, are private contractors.
01:54They're not NHS employees.
01:56So we'll look at the details of the Labour government's
02:00proposals.
02:01We'll scrutinise them very carefully.
02:03And you'll know in Parliament to be the Liberal Democrats
02:06championing better NHS, better health care,
02:09and better social care.
02:10Frankly, we're the only party on the opposition
02:12who's got credibility on it.