Liz Kendall MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, responding to a story on the Better Care Fund, said:

“Patients and taxpayers urgently need more joined-up services that help keep people healthy and living at home, rather than ending up in hospital.

"The government’s Better Care Fund is depressingly unambitious. It only brings together around four percent of the total we spend on the NHS and social care.

“The government should have focused on integrating frontline services from day one, but instead they forced through a backroom reorganisation that’s wasted £3 billion, fragmented the NHS and made integration harder to achieve.

"With our care services in crisis, we need far bigger and bolder plans for reform. Labour will ensure the full integration of the NHS and social care, underpinned by our £2.5 billion a year transformation fund which will help kick start the changes we need to ensure our care services are fit for the future.”

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