Andy Burnham has posted on social media about his desire to find “common ground” for social care reform. In it, he says he is “prepared to put everything I’ve got” behind this goal.
What is Louise Casey saying about the social care model?
Louise Casey has said there is “room for a mixed market” in the provision of social care, but not “profiteering out of misery”. This morning the Times splashed on a story saying “privately run nursing home chains face being cut out of a radical shake-up of social care in England to prevent taxpayers’ money being used to subsidise the profits of private equity”.
Oliver Wright and Eleanor Hayward reported:
The Times understands that the prime minister is reluctant to allow the new service to be operated by large private sector providers for profit and wants to base the model around community-led services run by charities, local authorities and not-for-profit companies.
“He is coming at this from the principle that he does not want to see private sector firms making large profits over the provision of a vital public service,” a senior government source said. “The model is going to be more like the NHS or the Live Well scheme he pioneered in Manchester rather than the system we have at the moment.”
In her interview on the Today programme this morning, Casey, the cross-bench peer and former civil servant leading the government’s social care work, said she thought there was “room for a mixed market” in the provision of social care. But she said she was opposed to “profiteering”.
I don’t like the idea of profiteering out of human misery and human life. I object to that.
I’d object to it, whether it was homelessness you were asking me about, or whether it was anything else I’ve been responsible for.
In a separate interview on the programme, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gave a similar answer.
I do think, though, that we do see examples where some private companies have been making ridiculous amounts of money.
Asked what could be done about that, he said:
It’s an issue if we are wasting money, if we’re wasting taxpayers’ money, and people are paying way over the odds. So you do it in the normal way … you have regulation, you have rules, and I think this whole area has not been looked at properly.
Why is Burnham speaking now?
Burnham is giving a speech on social care this morning, but he is not going to discuss in any detail the sort of reform to the system he wants to implement. Instead, he will focus on his intention to build a political consensus on the changes needed. He will say:
For decades, governments have kicked this issue down the road because they’ve seen it as too risky, too difficult, and too complicated.
Politicians might have different views but I’m serious about fixing this issue and to do that, we have to find common ground and listen to others to find a way forward.
It’s time to draw a line under people playing politics when the human cost of that means carers struggling, families paying the price and our NHS buckling under the strain.
Pippa Crerar and Aletha Adu have the details in their overnight story.
Louise Casey, the veteran Whitehall official who for years has been deployed by governments of all parties to solve some of their most intractable problems, is already leading and she will be attending the event with Burnham too. She is launching what she describes as a “Big Conversation on Care”, which is designed to “give the public their chance to share their views and help shape the future of adult social care in England”.
Who has been invited to the talks?
Burnham’s desire to find “common ground” on social care is undoubtedly sincere, but is already looking problematic. The No 10 news release says Burnham has “invited the leaders of the two main opposition parties, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey” to a meeting today to discuss the issue. The meeting will go ahead, but neither Badenoch nor Davey will be there in person.
Davey is in France, he has a son who needs care 24/7, and in last night he explained that he would be joining the meeting via Zoom. Badenoch reportedly has a medical appointment, and she will be sending Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, in her place.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has not been invited. Perhaps that is because his party has already decided what it thinks Burnham will propose (“a death tax”) and has spent the last few days . But that has not stopped him complaining about being NFI’d. In a statement last night he said:
If Andy Burnham is serious about putting politics aside to solve Britain’s biggest problems, it’s remarkable that he’s chosen to ignore the party that led over 300 national opinion polls and represents thousands of councillors and millions of Britons across the country.
It’s now clear that Burnham is conspiring behind closed doors with the failed political establishment to foist further tax rises on the country.
The fact Ed Davey and Kemi Badenoch are going along with this tells you all you need to know about their parties. This is the uniparty in action.
What else did Casey say about reform and funding?
Casey was on the Today programme this morning. While she did not set out in detail what sort of reform she would like to see, she condemned the way dementia is treated as a “hidden problem” by the health sector, because it is not prioritised in the way that cancer is, and she said services needed to be more joined up.
The vision that we must have for our country when it comes to a National Care Service is that the public do not have to face this constant battle lines between who does what and how … The vision, surely, is that we have something that basically is simple and straightforward, that the public know is going to be there.
On the question of funding, she also made the point that many families are already paying for adult social care.
Incidentally, they’re already paying for [care]. So this idea that somehow somebody’s going to come along and say, ‘Hello, here’s a whole new service and a whole new tax’ is just kind of cloud cuckoo land.
I will post more from her interview shortly.
What is on the agenda today?
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The Cabinet Office publishes annual figures on the civil service workforce.
Around 10am: Andy Burnham gives , and takes questions from journalists.
Afternoon: Burnham holds a meeting with the Tories and Lib Dems about social care.
Afternoon: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, is on a visit in north London.
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