MP in health summit pledge

AMETRO mayor contender has vowed to convene a health and social care summit if elected to examine the issue across Halton.

Steve Rotheram spoke in Westminster during a House Of Commons debate on social care in Livepool on Tuesday, March 7.

Mr Rotheram is Labour’s candidate to become the metro mayor of the Liverpool City Region in May.

He has offered to work with Department Of Health officials as well as the leaders of the six districts of the Liverpool City Region to convene a health and social care summit.

The Walton MP said that he would ‘ examine the current situation’ and see how the area could work together on what aspects could be ‘done better’.

He said in Parliament: “There are some innovative approaches and best practices in our area, and the Government might even learn something if they took part.

“Councils in our area have already shown the leadership on social care that the Government are singularly failing to, so that summit is a chance for the Government to answer their critics, see for themselves the pressures that local authorities are having to contend with on a daily basis and work to tackle the problem at source.

“The Government now need to accept their responsibility to the elderly and their families and carers.

“They have often tried to use a sticking plaster to offer a solution, but they know that a sustainable solution must be found to this growing problem.”

Speaking outside Westminster, of Mr Rotheram he said he will do ‘all I can’ to fill the ‘vacuum’ being left by the Government’s ‘woeful approach’ to the social care crisis.

He said that there are ‘clearly limits’ to what can be achieved at a subregional level within the current ‘inadequate’ resourcing.

Mr Rotheram added: “We don’t need another Government- backed commission on social care. “It is time for action. “Our elderly family members and our overstretched, and all too often under-rewarded, care workers deserve nothing less.”