Andy Burnham yesterday said he will fight the next election on a pledge to raise billions more in tax to fund ‘free’ social care.
Speaking as the Labour Party conference got under way in Liverpool, the Prime Minister said he was ready to ‘grasp the nettle’ and find the money needed to create an NHS-style ‘national care service’.
Experts have warned making social care free at the point of use could cost £18billion a year – equal to 2p on the basic rate of income tax.
Mr Burnham said the final cost would be lower, but declined to put a price tag on his plans. The PM indicated he was ready to countenance tax rises and said his proposal for a 10 per cent ‘death tax’ on all inheritances remained ‘on the table’. He said it would be a system where ‘everyone contributes, everyone is covered’.
Last night government sources told The Times that measures to pay for the Prime Minister’s social care reforms could include scrapping the pensions triple lock.
And former Labour Cabinet minister Darren Jones said the cost was too high to be raised purely through tax – and suggested axeing the triple lock to help pay for it: ‘The triple lock is very expensive and of benefit to older people. If you are reallocating money to help older people in the social care system, maybe there is some reform that can be done there.’
Andy Burnham yesterday said he will fight the next election on a pledge to raise billions more in tax to fund ‘free’ social care. Mr Burnham is seen here attending the first day of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool
Former Labour Cabinet minister Darren Jones said the cost was too high to be raised purely through tax – and suggested axeing the triple lock to help pay for it
The PM said a final decision on the funding model would depend on the outcome of Louise Casey’s review of the social care system. But he said he was willing to take ‘unpopular’ decisions to ‘rip the plaster off’ a problem that successive governments have failed to deal with.
Mr Burnham said the recent death of his father Roy, who was in a care home with Alzheimer’s, had redoubled his determination to act.
In comments that will revive speculation about an early election, the PM said he would put his plan to the country in Labour’s next manifesto.
Mr Burnham said on Friday he wanted to ‘knock dead’ speculation about a snap election. But it is highly unusual for party leaders to start talking about the contents of a manifesto three years out from an election.
Cross-party talks have already been held on social care and the PM said he hoped to reach a ‘consensus’. But both Reform and the Conservatives yesterday said they would not countenance tax rises to fund a new system.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said reforms should be funded by cuts to the welfare budget and other areas of government spending. He said tax rises were a ‘red line’.
Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick claimed Mr Burnham was ‘too weak to cut the sky-high benefits bill’
Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick said: ‘Andy Burnham is too weak to cut the sky-high benefits bill, so he’s coming for your home instead.’
But Mr Burnham pointed out many families are already paying huge sums to care for elderly loved ones.
He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show: ‘Social care in England is as unfair as American healthcare, where the most vulnerable in society can lose everything, they can be wiped out, not just by the condition that they have, but wiped out financially.’
Mr Burnham’s intervention came as the work and pensions secretary admitted the welfare system is too focused on handing people benefits instead of helping them to work. Pat McFadden said the benefits system was ‘the wrong way round’.
In his speech to Labour’s conference yesterday, he said it was time to focus on getting people into work, including ending the ‘shameful’ situation which has left one million young people not in education, employment or training (the so-called ‘Neets’).
