Layla Moran: 'We are basically at a standstill with social care'

Layla Moran sweeps into her Portcullis House office for her first interview since becoming Health and Social Care Committee chair. It’s Budget day and, on taking her seat, Moran instantly points out the “glaring omission” in Labour’s economic plans.

“We are basically at a standstill with social care,” she says. “What we heard in the Budget today – £600m – that is roughly what you need to stand still just by virtue of extra demand.”

While she welcomes the Chancellor’s £22.6bn NHS cash injection, Moran is adamant: “You can’t tackle the issues in the NHS, let alone the wider productivity issues in the economy, in our view, without looking at social care.”

True to her word, Moran reveals the committee’s first inquiry will be on social care. “It will surprise exactly zero people,” the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon laughs, “but that was the one I wanted to get cracking with first.”

Moran, elected unopposed, is one of three Lib Dems chairing select committees. If the excitement of the Budget wasn’t enough, she held her first committee meeting that same morning. How did it go?  

“We got through it,” she says with a smile, explaining that with only one returning member from the former committee, and only two members who have ever sat on a select committee – one of whom was an MP nine years ago – it was a “remarkable” experience. 

“For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve been in a room in that situation with members of other parties, where they are expected to work together and find a consensus. You could feel some of that tension in the room today.”

Moran, a teacher previously, did her homework on running for chair. “I went round a number of people who have been in this space for a very long time, and what resoundingly came back from them was: ‘Please don’t do another inquiry where you wring your hands and tell everyone what’s wrong, and it’s going to cost lots of money to fix it’.”

I remember asking my team to leave me alone for 15 minutes while I sobbed

For Moran, this means dangling the economic potential of reforming social care under the Treasury’s nose, by “quantifying” the missed contribution of those forced out of work by caring needs or commitments.

“We’re hoping to try to quantify how much this is worth to the economy as a whole, not just in delayed discharges, but carers who go part-time to look after elderly parents, or people who aren’t getting care packages, let alone those people who are disabled and need a bit more support to get back into work.”

Using this carrot-and-stick approach, Moran hopes that if money “starts to appear here and there”, the committee can “help the government to direct it to where it’s going to be most effective”. 

However, Moran refuses to be drawn on what kind of cross-party working on social care, if any, will take place – or what the conditions might be for Lib Dem participation. She will not say whether she wants reforms to be implemented in this Parliament or whether the discussions ought to be modelled on the Dilnot Commission, which recommended capping care costs.

“All we know are the same rumours as everyone else,” she replies when asked whether there have been any approaches. She adds that the committee will “have the opportunity to help shape” Labour’s plans for a National Care Service, which is currently “a bit of a blank box”.

She does, however, support the need for cross-party work to solve one of Whitehall’s most notorious wicked problems.

“It cannot be one party that owns social care, in the same way that I would argue there is no one party that owns the NHS,” she explains. “I think it’s helpful that all political parties feel they own this and that it is important for them to leave it in a better state than they found it.”

While Moran has a friendly relationship with Wes Streeting, she says the Health Secretary is “under no illusions”, adding: “I’m not about to give him a free pass just because I like him.”

When people are called before the committee, Moran believes they “should  be nervous... not because you’re about to lambast them, certainly not because you’re about to be rude to them, but because you’ve done your homework”.

Does she think Streeting’s closeness to the private sector will see him come before the committee later down the line? “Potentially,” she replies, but seems to suggest leaning on the private sector is acceptable if it helps patient care improve.

“I’ve always been of the personal opinion as a Liberal Democrat [that the NHS should be] free at the point of use. This is the treasured NHS, and it needs to be treated with care. We take pride in it. It was the Beveridge report, the Liberal Beveridge report, that was its genesis, even though it was a Labour minister that put it into action. So we have to safeguard all of that,” she says. “But actually, fundamentally, I always just want to see results.”

With Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledging the biggest day-to-day increase to NHS spending since 2010, does Moran think there should be limits?

“I’m not sure I’d pose the question quite in that sense,” she replies, but does go on to hint that endlessly upping the NHS budget is not the solution to its problems. 

“We are now at the point in the NHS where, despite a lot of increases in funding over the last few years, you’ve actually found productivity has decreased rather than increased,” she says.
“Is there a limit to anything? I’m not sure that’s the best question to be asking at this point. I think the productivity puzzle is the bit that we need to be going after.”

There’s very often not a single sentence you can say about a review like [Cass]

With so many pieces in the NHS jigsaw, do MPs truly understand the complex system they have been elected to fix? 

“I will openly admit I don’t feel I do yet,” says Moran plainly. “I am absolutely getting under the skin of it, and you have to get under the skin of it quite quickly.”

She reaches across the sofa for a large square of paper, on which is printed a tangle of interlinking coloured boxes. This is a stakeholder map of the NHS, given to Moran by patient safety commissioner Henrietta Hughes to prepare for her new role.

“It’s not even as long as an arm; it’s a spider’s web,” she says. “All these bodies sit on the list of people we will want to actively engage with, and that’s before you even get to third sector, NGOs, private sector – all of it’s in our remit.”

While MPs grapple with the complexities of the NHS, some have suggested citizens’ assemblies – where the public are consulted on ethical issues of the day – could be deployed as an aid to democratic work.

Moran suggests that if Parliament “can’t get through the impasse” of the assisted dying debate, a citizens’ assembly on the topic could be “one of the answers”.
“If we find it intractable and we keep coming back to it, perhaps that’s one of the options,” she says. “I’m certainly open to the idea.”

Moran also reveals that, at their next conference, the Lib Dems will be putting forward a motion addressing the party’s approach to LGBT+ issues. 

“Christine Jardine is our spokesperson on this. She updated all of us about it just this week. They’re seeking views, they are talking to stakeholders, and they’re going to put a motion to Conference. I think it’s in the spring, so that is in train,” she says. 

Jardine later tells The House that, with debate around LGBT+ issues intensifying over the last couple of years, the Lib Dems want to “look at the policy” to make sure it “still reflects the party’s beliefs”.

We are basically at a standstill with social care

Unlike the two main parties, the Liberal Democrats, now the third largest party in Westminster, have yet to release a formal statement on the Cass review, which highlighted a lack of evidence in treatments for young people seeking to change gender. 

Moran says when she stood against Ed Davey for the leadership, there “wasn’t a paper thin difference” between them on their support for the trans community, but adds that when the Cass review was published she was “very focused on Palestine”.  

Today, she defends her party’s lack of statement on the issue. “There’s very often not a single sentence you can say about a review like that. Actually, you need to pick out the different parts and make sure you’re getting all of that right.”

Now 42, Moran grew up in Hammersmith, the daughter of James, a diplomat, and Randa, a Christian Palestinian from Jerusalem. In 2017, Moran became the first MP of Palestinian descent to be elected from any party. She has introduced a Palestine Statehood Bill to Parliament every year since being elected.

“One of the worst days” in Moran’s life as a parliamentarian was the day of the ceasefire vote on the conflict in Gaza. 

“As the fourth party, we didn’t get to vote on our own position. We could only vote on an amalgam of other positions, none of which were created with any Palestinian having had any kind of say over them.

“I am struck by the number of people happy to make grand statements on Palestine, [despite] seldom actually speaking to anyone who is from the region.”

The afternoon of the ceasefire vote, Moran discovered one of her family members had died in Gaza.

“I remember coming into my then office – which was very similar to this – and asking my team to leave me alone for 15 minutes while I sobbed. Then my only answer came from there: I will vote for anything that brings peace, even if it’s imperfect, and that’s what we ended up doing.”

In Moran’s eyes, the parliamentary system had failed that day. “When it comes to those kinds of binary choices – imperfect choices on things that are fundamentally incredibly personal and nuanced – I personally think that the system didn’t do itself justice that day on an issue that is too complex to be a yes/no about.”

Like her party, Moran is supportive of “the whole caboodle” of reforms: from proportional representation to removing hereditary peers from the Lords and, as a humanist, to seeing the Bishops vacate the upper house. 

Now one of 72 Lib Dem MPs, and a committee chair to boot, could Moran see herself running for leader of the party again?

“Tried that – didn’t work!” she says, laughing. “In all seriousness, my focus now is being the best possible chair.” Proving her dedication, Moran took a stack of Health Committee-related documents to the beach with her while on holiday to prepare for her new role.

As we head to Westminster Bridge for her photoshoot – she has come a long way from the “2D Layla” who hated having her photo taken – Moran says she has recently “rediscovered her love of sci-fi novels” and is also searching for a new video game to play.

Dodging pink fluffy rickshaws, hopping through bike lanes and pausing for chats, the new Health and Social Care Committee chair seems in her element. Now, Moran is determined to fix the “democratic deficit” that comes from our health and social care system failing the public.

“People can see more and more money going in for services that are getting poorer and poorer,” she says. “This is too important to play party politics with. We actually just have to get this right.” 

PoliticsHome Newsletters

Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.