Coffey promises £500 million ‘down payment’ for social care over winter

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Health secretary Therese Coffey has promised a £500 million “down payment” for social care as part of plans to “rebalance” NHS and care funds. On social care she said: “This £500 million acts as the downpayment in the rebalancing funding across health and social care as we develop our longer term plans.” Conservative former health secretary and Commons Health Committee chair Jeremy Hunt asked Ms Coffey to “rethink this new two-week access target for general practice”. Following the frontbench exchanges, Mr Hunt said: “It is not more targets the NHS needs, it is more doctors.” Ms Coffey told the Commons it is on top of commitments to “boost the health and care workforce”, and it will “sit alongside the design and delivery of our forthcoming workforce plan”. A short-term, short-notice pot of cash is not going to help social care services to address unmet need, improve quality of care, or recruit and retain more staff.” She added measures to tackle the workforce are “too little too late to avoid an extremely difficult winter.” Plans to help address the problem of doctors retiring early over pension tax charges included flexible retirement options such as partial retirement.