Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:46 pm on 31 January 2018.
The observation is well made and we know the continuing times we are in with stretched budget pressures, and there's no point ignoring this place and stand on my feet and say that we can do remarkable miracles—we're working within the constraints that we have. What we do have in Wales, I have to say, is a very different approach to what we're doing within social care and with health, not least in the approach that's been taken with the apolitical, cross-party support that there has been for the health and social care review, if you look at what we're doing with the intermediate care fund, in that way of joined-up working. So, we're not looking for additional funding, although I'd love to have some, Dai—I really would. But it's also to do with how we use the funding that we currently have in a clever way.
I've come this morning from a visit in Cardiff, with my colleague Julie Morgan, looking at the independent living centre, which does exactly that. It uses the intermediate care funding, into which we've put £60 million over the last year, to look at the ways in which health and social care join up to provide that seamless care and allows people to stay in their homes or closer to their homes for longer, for better, and to not then wash up into later, more expensive forms of treatment and care.
So, Dai, I recognise the point that's been made in that report, because it shows that we have to continue thinking how we make the most of the money that we have. He will know, of course, as well, that amongst the four proposals discussed and put out for consultation by the Finance Secretary and my colleague, Mark Drakeford, was a discussion on a social care levy. I think it's pertinent that that is now out there for discussion because you and I and our families and our constituents will have to seriously consider, in the longer term, as we look at the trends that we've identified in the indicators that the Welsh Government has brought forward as national indicators of the strain that the system will be under, how we rise to that. Part of it is through working more cleverly and part of it is by finding the money. I would love to think that, in the next Treasury statement from the UK Government, they'd open the cheque book and say, 'Let's actually put something here', so that we can have the consequentials, but we wait.