Recommendation 14

The Department told us that its initiatives to increase the supply of nurses into the NHS should benefit social care as both sectors have the same entry route. However, our Committee remains concerned about potential barriers to moving between sectors such as nurses who move from the NHS into social care dropping out of their NHS pension.30 Locally, health and social care providers can also be in competition with one another for nursing staff.31 The Department argued that the fact it has separate plans for health and social care does not signify one being dominant over the other, and said it takes “a whole series of actions” for the social care sector.32 However, our Committee has warned before that the Department gives relatively little consideration to adult social care compared with health, including in reports on The adult social care workforce33and Readying the NHS and social care for the COVID-19 peak.34 For example, the latter report illustrated the stark contrast in the approach taken towards protecting the NHS from the pandemic compared with the care sector, with an action plan for adult social care published four weeks after the initial NHS letter on plans to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.35 The Department acknowledged that the social care system is highly fragmented, for example, in the way it is run by a number of different providers, and told us there are some “yet-to- be-answered questions” about whether the Department will retain some of the national oversight and interventions in social care that it has used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Permanent Secretary of the Department said that “we will certainly be wanting to look at what we have learned about social care during COVID and baking that into future policy.”36 28 C&AG’s Report, para 1.12 29 Q 37 30 Qq 29, 65 31 C&AG’s Report, para 1.6 32 Qq 17, 30 33 C&AG’s Report, The adult social care workforce in England, Session 2017–19, HC 714, 8 February 2018 34 C&AG’s Report, Readying the NHS and ad