Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has piled pressure on Andy Burnham over his handling of social care, writing to the prime minister to demand he rule out tax rises or increased borrowing to pay for any reform.
In her letter, Ms Badenoch said any solution “must also be fair to those who have made provisions and saved up over the course of their lives” — a direct challenge to a prime minister who has so far declined to say how, or when, he will fix the system.
The intervention came after Mr Burnham, in his first major broadcast interview since taking office, told the BBC that the NHS would “collapse” without social care reform, while admitting he could not put a timeline on it. He said only that he did not want to leave office without bringing “substantial change,” and that he would put “whatever political capital I have into fixing broken social care.”
Mr Burnham is due to give a speech on adult social care on Wednesday, but the BBC understands he will stop short of setting out a new system. Instead, he is expected to announce he is speeding up the Casey Commission, the independent review led by Baroness Louise Casey, whose final recommendations were not due until 2028.
Critics will note this is far from the first time Mr Burnham has promised action on this issue. As health secretary under Gordon Brown back in 2009, he proposed a universal social care system and later pursued a compulsory levy to fund it — including an option to let people defer payment until after death, which the Conservatives at the time branded a “death tax.” Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick echoed that warning now, saying it would be wrong to “raid people’s life savings” or draw more families into paying tax when a loved one dies, even as he agreed social care “needs fixing.”
Under the current system, people in England and Northern Ireland with savings above £23,250 receive no council help with care costs, with different rules in Scotland and Wales. Sarah Woolnough of the King’s Fund called it a “punitive system” in which one in seven people pay more than £100,000 for their care, and suggested reform could cost the taxpayer “low billions per year” — a figure Labour has yet to confirm or engage with in any detail.
The lack of firm commitments will be familiar to voters. Two years ago, Sir Keir Starmer was criticised when Labour scrapped a planned £86,000 lifetime cap on social care costs in England — the latest in a long history of Labour promises on care that have failed to materialise.
Other opposition voices called for a way forward that would not simply mean higher taxes. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said he wanted a “real and lasting consensus,” insisting no one should lose their home to pay for care, while Layla Moran, who chairs the Health and Social Care Committee, warned against the issue becoming a “political football” while conceding that funding questions cannot be avoided.
Burnham signals welfare crackdown, but stops short of detail
On benefits, Mr Burnham suggested he might “increase the conditions on people required to receive benefits,” telling the BBC there “are people out there who, with the right support, can go into work.” He said support would become “conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them,” while insisting he would not go “straight to blaming” claimants, citing “young people in their 20s who have been quite seriously let down because the support wasn’t there for them when it should have been there.”
Whether that rhetoric translates into a welfare bill that actually falls remains to be seen, given the prime minister’s own admission that he cannot yet say when, or how, his social care reforms will arrive.
