BIRMINGHAM, England — Andy Burnham has laid a social care trap for Britain’s next general election. The Conservatives think they can waltz right past it. Three members of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Cabinet said the party could opt not to unveil a major care offer of its own by the time the next election rolls around — in the hope the Labour prime minister’s proposals fall apart.
The person was granted anonymity, like others in this article, to discuss internal policy development. There’s a wide political consensus that England’s status quo on adult social care is awful. Care, which includes support for people in the final years of their lives, can be inadequate and costly, and family homes are sold off to fund essential help.
But political controversy has long greeted attempts at reform — leaving the issue unresolved. Burnham used his first conference speech as Labour leader in Liverpool last week to touch three live wires in British politics: EU membership, electoral reform and changing state pensions protections to help fund a social care overhaul. A second member of the shadow Cabinet admitted the country is “completely f–ked” unless the cost of dying is rectified — but downplayed the likelihood of the Tories offering real reform.
And Burnham’s gambit — which involves a change to the previously sacred “triple lock” on state pensions — has already opened up rifts in the Conservative Party over whether it should back change. For the prime minister, establishing a “national care service” is a long-running moral crusade — one he’s driving forward with raw emotion after he lost his father to Alzheimer’s last month. But the politics of his move cannot be ignored either.
The “triple lock” on pensions is sacrosanct to many Conservatives, who introduced it back in 2011. Increasing state pensions by the highest of the rate of inflation, 2.5% or average earnings was designed to make retirees — a Tory-leaning segment of society — better off. But others in the party believe the ballooning cost of the U.K. welfare bill — more than half of which goes on pensions — is utterly unsustainable.
Burnham proposed weakening the third prong of the triple lock — after the next general election, due by 2029 — to save an estimated £15 billion a year by 2040. The savings would be funneled into a pending plan to reform social care. That opens a dividing line among senior figures in the Conservatives.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
