Building Back Better: the Government's plan for Health and Social Care

Health and social care is fundamental to us all, especially after COVID-19 brought into sharp relief how critical the effective delivery of public services is across the UK. The Government is therefore announcing a significant investment in health and social care of around £12 billion per year on average across the UK.

To implement these measures, the Government will:

1. begin the consultation on our adult social care charging reforms in October this year;
2. continue to work closely with the devolved administrations on our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, including on the electives recovery;
3. publish the final funding settlement for NHS England and Improvement, the delivery plan for tackling the electives backlog, the White Paper for reforming adult social care and the plan for integration later this year;
4. introduce the Health and Social Care Levy and increase rates of dividend tax from April 2022, and extend the Levy to include individuals above State Pension age who are still in employment from April 2023; and
5. bring in to effect Dilnot-style social care charging reforms in England from October 2023.

This document shows an estimate of where benefits from new health and social care spending may fall and concludes that, subject to the assumptions used in this modelling, in 2022-23:

• Lower-income households will be large net beneficiaries from this package, with the poorest households gaining most (as a proportion of income).
• The 20% highest-income households will contribute more than 40 times that of the 20% lowest-income households.

And, in relation to housing, while the focus of the announcement is on the use of assets to pay for care and the £86,000 cap, the document also refers to investment in the Disabled Facilities Grant and supported housing, as well as exploring other innovative housing solutions to support more people to live independently at home.