Burnham to Fight the Election on a Free National Care Service
The Prime Minister committed to a manifesto promising universally funded social care in England, free at the point of use, and ruled it out for this Parliament because the last manifesto bars rises in income tax, national insurance and VAT. Baroness Casey’s review has been brought forward from 2028 to next summer. “I’m going to rip the plaster off, if I can put it that way, because someone has to do it,” he said.
He is proposing to build social care on the principle that made the health service popular and expensive: “everyone contributes, everyone is covered”, though “not precisely necessarily in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS”. His argument is that the status quo already taxes people, and brutally — it is “as unfair as American healthcare, where the most vulnerable in society can lose everything” — and that leaving it alone will “in the end, break the National Health Service”. He pre-empted the attack he knows is coming, noting that opponents “will call the policy a dementia tax or a death tax” when “we have dementia taxes right now”. Reform obliged within hours. Told a free universal system might cost £18bn a year, he said: “It’s not that high.” Watch Tuesday’s speech, then the Casey review.