Andy Burnham wants to thank the nation’s carers – except, possibly, the one he told us slipped his Granny Kitty’s engagement ring off her finger while she was in a care home a couple of decades ago. I don’t think the Prime Minister is ever quite going to eliminate light-fingered care workers, but he did confirm today that he wants to create a National Care Service which will be free at the point of delivery. This will come into being in the next parliament, assuming he wins it, and he assured us it will be fully-funded, not paid for through more borrowing.
A National Care Service is a policy which will be cheered in households who currently fear that Granny’s home will be lost to care costs
“I accept that I may pay the political price,” he told us, “but someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.” All very well, but there is something he is not telling us. How to pay for a National Care Service which, according to the Health Foundation, could cost an additional £18 billion a year? All that Burnham told us today is that the triple lock on the state pension will be ‘adjusted’ from April 2030. After that date it will rise in line with either prices or 2.5 per cent, whichever is greater. It will, in other words, be reduced to double lock and will no longer rise in line with average earnings – even though the Prime Minister did tell us, oddly, that over time the state pension will rise in line with earnings (how come, if that factor is being taken out of the triple lock?).
Burnham is right to wonder whether he will pay a political price: remember what happened to Rachel Reeves when she limited the winter fuel allowance to pensioners on benefits? It was the beginning of her undoing. But even if he does get away with ditching the triple lock, isn’t something missing? Ending the triple lock won’t save a penny in the short term; all it will do is to limit the acceleration of the cost of the state pension in years to come. So where is that £18 billion going to come from? There was no answer to that today. Possibly we will have to wait until John Healey’s Budget, or maybe until after the next election, when Burnham – should he win – will presumably have a mandate which does not involve freezing the rates of income tax, VAT or National Insurance.
But will the cost even stop at £18 billion? Remarkably, the Department for Health and Social Care could not provide me with an overall figure for the amount that adults are currently spending on their own care: a sum which in future may land on the taxpayer. Even if the government does know of such a figure, the problem is going to be that making healthcare – or anything – free at the point of delivery is going to increase demand. People who are currently looking after elderly relatives themselves may in future be inclined to let the state do the job in future. People who are currently paying for one or two visits a day from a carer may be inclined to demand that the National Care Service provides round-the-clock care. Why not, if you and your heirs are not going to have to pick up the bill?
One thing is for sure, however. The main beneficiaries of the National Care Service will be people who are relatively well off. Those with savings or assets below £23,200 already get their care for free. The cost may well, however, end up landing on the poor through their taxes. A National Care Service is a policy which will be cheered in households who currently fear that Granny’s home will be lost to care costs (as Burnham says his granny’s was). Many of those households will be Tory-voting. This may prove politically extremely useful at the next election, and it shouldn’t be under-estimated. But it is hard not to come to the conclusion that Burnham is taking us deeper into the fiscal mire.
There was a weird hiatus in the middle of Burnham’s speech. Did he forget his lines, did an autocue fail, or was he welling up with emotion in readiness for the section on his recently deceased father that was to come? Or maybe it was to symbolise the big black hole in the government finances which is growing bigger by the day and which Burnham has so far provided little guidance as to how he will fill before it leads to fiscal implosion.
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