Since then the Committee reports that the Fund has failed to achieve any of these objectives and witnesses displayed an appallingly casual attitude to the targets that had been set for reducing emergency admissions and delayed transfers of care, both of which it says, have actually increased.

In practice, the Committee says that the Fund was little more than a complicated ruse to transfer money from health to local government to paper over the funding pressures on adult social care.

It is clear that integration must now be delivered in the context of the sustainability and transformation planning process. It says that place-based planning will be critical to the future of health and social care. However, to succeed, the NHS must find better ways to engage more genuinely with local government and local populations.

Integrating health and social care's conclusions are:

•  The Departments do not know what is the most effective balance of limited funding across health and social care.
• The Better Care Fund was little more than a ruse to move money from the health sector to social care, disguised within an overly-bureaucratic initiative that purported to integrate health and social care services.
• The Better Care Fund has been rendered largely redundant as a means of building integration by the sustainability and transformation planning process.
• We are unconvinced that sustainability and transformation planning will succeed where the Better Care Fund has failed in building successful integrated services.
• Sustainability and transformation planning is neither inclusive nor transparent enough.
• It is deeply unsatisfactory that the Departments and NHS England washed their hands of any accountability for the Better Care Fund.