Andy Burnham told the the NHS will collapse without social care reform, and he said he wants substantial change to the system. The death tax argument is back at the centre of the debate because he linked the pressure on the NHS to the way adult social care is funded.
Burnham said he could not put a timeline on the changes and added that he would not want to leave office without bringing in “whatever political capital I have into fixing broken social care”. He is due to make a speech on adult social care on Wednesday, while the understands he will stop short of unveiling a full new system.
Burnham and the Casey Commission
The understands Burnham will instead announce that he is speeding up the Casey Commission. Baroness Louise Casey is not expected to give her final recommendations until 2028, so any change that follows Wednesday’s speech would still depend on a review process rather than an immediate redesign.
That leaves people needing care in England and Northern Ireland waiting for a system that still works through councils. In those places, anyone with savings worth more than £23,250 is not entitled to help with care costs from their council.
Sarah Woolnough on costs
Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund, told Radio 4’s Today programme the current arrangement is a “punitive system” and that it means “quite a lot of people go without care that they need”. She said one in seven people pay in excess of £100,000 for social care.
Woolnough said reforms could range from making social care free at the point of need to placing a cap on the amount people spend. She also said Burnham has for a long time mooted the idea of a social care system similar to NHS.
Kemi Badenoch and tax funding
Kemi Badenoch wrote to Burnham saying he should rule out tax rises or increased borrowing to fund reform. Burnham suggested making it harder to claim benefits, and he also said in 2009 that he first proposed a universal system of social care in England when he was health secretary under Gordon Brown.
The immediate question is not whether the argument will continue; it is whether Wednesday produces a timetable, a mechanism, or only a faster review. Until then, people facing care bills above the council threshold still live under the same rules, and the next step sits with Burnham’s speech and the sped-up Casey Commission.
