Andy Burnham tells BBC NHS ‘will collapse’ without social care reform
Andy Burnham told the BBC that “the NHS will collapse” if social services are not reformed, but said he could not put a timetable on the changes.
In her first major interview since becoming Prime Minister, Burnham said she would not want to leave office without bringing “significant change” to the social care system.
The Prime Minister also suggested making it harder to access benefits, saying the country should be serious about reducing its welfare bill.
conservative leader Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch has written to the prime minister, saying he should ignore tax rises or increased borrowing to fund social care reform.
Burnham told the BBC that if the government did not reform social care the NHS would “collapse under the weight of caring for people who don’t need to be part of the NHS system”.
But when asked whether he would create a new system before the next election, he said he “can’t put a timetable on there at the moment” but said he would “use whatever political capital I have to fix broken social care”.
Burnham first proposed a universal social care system in England in 2009, when he served as health minister under Gordon Brown.
Now as prime minister he will give a speech on adult social care on Wednesday.
The BBC understands that in this speech the Prime Minister will refrain from announcing plans for the new system, instead announcing that he will step up the Casey Commission, an independent review assessing possible solutions to social care.
Baroness Louise Casey is currently not expected to give her final recommendations until 2028, but Burnham wants to bring her program forward.
“Social care has been on a long road and I’ve taken it straight forward,” he told the BBC.
Adult social care provides government support to help people live more independently, including help with household chores such as washing and cleaning.
Unlike the NHS, social care is not free at the time of use. In England and Northern Ireland, people with savings exceeding £23,250 are not entitled to help with care costs from their council.
Different rules apply to eligibility in Wales and Scotland.
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of healthcare think tank the King’s Fund, said the current “penalty system” meant “quite a number of people are left without the care they need”, with one in seven people paying more than £100,000 for social care.
Although Burnham has yet to outline any plans, Woolnough told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: reforms could range from making social care free in times of need to putting a cap on the amount people spend.
“The Prime Minister has long discussed the idea of a social care system similar to the NHS,” he said.
“It may be expensive, but given the amount we spend on other public services (about £200bn on the NHS) we are talking in the low billions a year for some of these options.”
Adult social care has proven to be a complex issue for successive governments to resolve.
Two years ago Sir Keir Starmer was criticized for scrapping Labor plans to impose an £86,000 cap on the amount people in England spend on social care over their lifetime.
In his letter to Burnham, Badenoch wrote that “any solution to the problems of social care must also be fair to those who have been provisioning and saving throughout their lives”.
