Andy Burnham has promised to overhaul England’s social care system, saying he wants to create a universal service that would be free for people to use.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the prime minister said the plans would be included in Labour’s next manifesto, meaning changes won’t be introduced before the next general election.
‘I’m going to rip the plaster off, if I can put it that way, because someone has to do it,’ he said.
Burnham didn’t give details about how the new system would be funded, saying a review by Baroness Casey was still under way.
Casey was originally tasked by Keir Starmer to deliver her review on social care in 2028, but this has been brought forward to next summer.
When asked whether the new social care service would work in a similar way to the NHS, Burnham said: ‘It will be a system of that kind. So everyone contributes, everyone’s covered, but not precisely necessarily in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS.’
He added the death of his father, Roy, from Alzheimer’s two weeks ago had pushed him to make social care a priority.
‘If I look at the people who cared for my dad, they must just feel invisible to the political class,’ he said. ‘They work day in, day out, with huge humour and humanity and skill in what they do…caring for other people’s parents on poverty pay. How have we let this go on for so long?’
The prime minister acknowledged reform would be difficult, but argued: ‘If we continue to approach this issue with politics as usual, where people are scoring points and they’re taking a proposal and then trying to frighten the public at home about it, we will never fix it.’
However, Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said Burnham could show us how serious he is about fixing social care by ‘getting on with the cross-party talks that began in July.
‘This can’t just be a series on No 10 headlines with no real action.’
Robert Jenrick, economic spokesman for Reform UK, criticised Burnham for his refusal to rule out ‘his universal death tax’.
‘He’s too weak to cut the benefits bill so he’s coming for your home instead.’
In contrast, Caroline Abrahams CBE, charity director at Age UK, welcomed the news. She said: ‘The comments made by the Prime Minister today suggest we are closer to the fundamental social care reform we need to see than we’ve been for a generation.
‘In the years since, millions of older and disabled people and their families have had to put up with a system that is increasingly unfit for purpose, and hundreds of thousands of care staff have done the best they could with it, all the time on poverty pay.
‘We can and we must do better and we await the prime minister’s speech on Tuesday with huge anticipation.’
Image: Shutterstock
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