Ed Davey warns social care “avalanche” threatens to bury NHS as figures reveal hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges

Embargoed until 22.30 Wednesday 5 July 2023

• Ed Davey gives speech to LGA Conference warning of impending catastrophe for NHS unless government fixes social care crisis

• New analysis reveals hospitals lost 128,000 bed days in May to delayed discharges, up 40% compared to last year

• NHS trusts hardest hit by delayed discharges include Liverpool, Leeds, East Sussex and Surrey

• Lib Dem Leader calls for a Carer’s Minimum Wage to fix social care staffing crisis

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will today (Thursday 6 July) warn that a social care “avalanche” is “threatening to bury the NHS”, in a speech to the Local Government Association’s annual conference.

It comes as new research has revealed the hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges, with thousands of bed days being lost because medically fit patients are stuck in hospital waiting for care.

The House of Commons Library analysis commissioned by the Liberal Democrats reveals the NHS lost over 128,800 bed days to delayed discharges from hospital in May, up 32% on the same period last year. The vast majority (82%) of bed days lost involved patients who been stuck in hospital for three weeks or more. 

The NHS trusts with the highest number of bed days lost to delayed discharges were Liverpool University Hospitals (8,146), East Sussex (4,505), Leeds Teaching Hospitals (4,370), University Hospitals Sussex (4,450) and Frimley in Surrey (3,748).

Delayed discharges take place when medically fit patients are unable to leave hospital, often due to a lack of social care.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for the introduction of a Carer’s Minimum Wage, £2 above the minimum wage, to tackle huge shortages in the social care sector. This would help address the staggering 165,000 vacancies in social care, which are leaving far too many patients stranded in hospitals waiting for the care they need.

In his speech at the Local Government Association conference, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey is expected to say:

“Social care has been under extreme pressure for years. Now it’s turning into an avalanche, and threatening to bury the NHS.

“We know that the crisis in the NHS is inextricably linked to the crisis in social care. You can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care.

“The crisis in social care means that only two in five people are able to leave hospital when they are ready to do so, putting even more pressure on already overstretched hospitals. It’s all connected. And it’s all causing so much pain and distress.

“There aren’t nearly enough carers. More than one in ten frontline care jobs are unfilled, leaving more than two and a half million people without the care they need. This isn’t a job we can outsource to ChatGPT. We simply have to recruit more carers.

“But we won’t do it while carers earn less than even the lowest-paid jobs in supermarkets and call centres. We won’t do it unless the Government starts valuing carers properly, and makes sure they are paid properly too.

“That’s why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a new Carers’ Minimum Wage. A big idea, to start to solve the crisis in social care, and help to solve the crisis in our NHS too.”

ENDS

Notes to Editor

Ed Davey will give a speech at 11am Thursday 6 July at the Local Government Association conference in Bournemouth.

Full research from the House of Commons Library is available here.

This shows, for each acute NHS trust in England:

• The number of people at the end of each quarter who were ready to be discharged from hospital but had not been discharged by midnight

• The total number of excess bed days accrued by the patients in hospital waiting to be discharged, on a snapshot date each quarter. This is recorded as the number of days for those waiting 7+/14+/21+ days for discharge.