Just been listening to Andy Burnham on care ......

At last a PM who cares!👏👏👏

It sounds great the changes AB wants to make.👏
My concern is if pensions do not rise very much will it affect those paying rent by making them eligible for HB, council tax benefits and Pension Credit??

This needs cross party co operation, especially if Labour doesn't have a big majority after the next Election (I very much doubt it at this stage) they will need support.
Be interesting to see the plan, as it's going to be down to outside agencies to fulfill any contracts of care.

travelsafar

It sounds great the changes AB wants to make.👏
My concern is if pensions do not rise very much will it affect those paying rent by making them eligible for HB, council tax benefits and Pension Credit??

I assume so, but presumably in the same way that younger people are eligible for such benefits. That will reduce the feeling that the young are paying for the old, who get what is often seen as special treatment.

It does, however, mean that the gap between those who paid into occupational pensions and/or married woman's stamps will narrow even more, which may act as a disincentive for those whose occupational pensions will be small.

There is still a lot to be discussed though - we don't know the details yet, as there is a long time to the GE, by which time they will be in the manifesto.

Visgir1

This needs cross party co operation, especially if Labour doesn't have a big majority after the next Election (I very much doubt it at this stage) they will need support.
Be interesting to see the plan, as it's going to be down to outside agencies to fulfill any contracts of care.

It’s a good idea of course and needs doing but he may well not have ten years in power which is why it needs total cross party support.

We’ve still got to sell our homes to pay for residential care home costs though haven’t we?

Why would it?

Burnham has set out a broad schedule. Louise Casey will produce her independent report on social care in 2027, setting out what a national care service could look like and how it could be paid for.

We shall have to wait and see … but if say the responsibility for funded care is removed from local councils and becomes centrally funded - just as the NHS is - then that gives scope for substantial council tax cuts for households. I calculate that £600 of the annual council tax I pay funds social care. That’s equivalent to a £3,000 rise in the tax personal allowance.

My county council's current budget for funded care is £900 million for around 17,000 people at an average cost of £55,000 a year. That includes a premium for paying the fat cats, the bankers and other greedy people who currently cream of the top.

Putting money back into people’s pockets to spend, boosts the economy by supporting business, creating jobs and increasing tax revenue.

So care homes are still going to be run privately and there is no plan to replace all the council ran care homes we used to have?

Nobody has said what the plan is beyond Burham's very broad announcement.

We have to wait for Baroness Casey's review and report.

Other than that it will contained in the existing envelope. I highly doubt there will be funds for redeveloping pretty much from scratch a council led care homes model. I’d be more interested in the standards required than in who owns it.

The speech regarding National Social Care was too sketchy to come to many conclusions, but Burnham did say that no one should sell their home or loose their savings. That care would be free at the point of use. My take-away is that he envisages a service principled on the NHS.

It is a massive undertaking, and we know that the NHS was years in construction, I would imagine this to be the same.

70’s Labour. I’m sure most here remember it well. The country was an economic basket case. The sick man of Europe.

Plagued by strikes, three day weeks, rubbish piling up on the streets, bodies unburied. All the time whilst unions trooped into Downing St to demand more pay for less work.

Anyone who thinks that government can run companies should read the history of British Leyland, British Rail, British Airways, British Gas, British Telecom. Oh government had control alright. They respectively made the worst cars in Europe (sporadically when they weren’t striking for better pay and conditions), inedible sandwiches on filthy late trains, expensive and unaffordable airfares, gas men who never turned up to fix your boiler and telephone lines that took months to install.

Burnham is in cuckoo land, à socialist dream world wearing his rose coloured spex. No thanks.

My memory of the seventies is good, even though I was only a young teenager.. For the issues in the Labour governments of the seventies, look back to the strikes under Ted Heath. Labour inherited a crock of you know what then, too.

The seventies were a terrible time with the strikes, but I don't think Andy Burnham wants to turn the clock back to then, nor is he looking at that time with rose-tinted spectacles. It sounds as if he wants to put right what is not working at present but, if it is working, to keep the status quo. He wants public services to work for the public, not to line the pockets of millionaires and overseas companies.

But tgat was my point in part. Government should butt out of running businesses. Nationalised utilities etc were a nightmare. I was newly married and horrified at the state of the nation.

I find I’m dreading what may be coming down the line….

Maybe it’s just me as so many of you are in thrall to Labour.
I’m just not.

Strange isn’t it how people still complain today about poor service from companies that were once publicly owned and are now run for the benefit of CEOs and shareholders.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been struck on filthy intercity trains with overflowing toilets and no food or water. I also spent 50 years commuting to London with frequent long delays and cancellations.

It’s a Thatcherite myth the privatisation brings efficiency. It just makes some people wealthy at the expense of workers and customers.

I had some very good British made cars, Ford, Vauxhall and Rover.

I do remember the power cuts of 1972, about miners’ pay which had fallen behind other manual jobs. Why shouldn’t they have been paid a comparable wage for a hard job that most people would never in million years have wanted to do?

Nationalised utilities etc were a nightmare

Do you think the water industry is better now?

The bond vigilantes will be coming for Burnham and Labour. And with Milei causing trouble over the Falklands putting Miliband and Labour in an impossible position because they won't support the Islanders due to their net zero zealotry, just watch Labour drop in.the polls.

The honeymoon's over.

United Utilities water, here in Manchester and the surrounding area is great.

Do you rember trying to get a landline installed in 1972 with British Telecom. I do. Madness. We had to share a ‘party line’! Picked up the phone to hear someone else was using it. Rose tinted spex as I say and that’s just one example.

Choice of provider is better.

Labour will turn the clock back. The rich taxpayers are leaving the country in drives - going to Portugal, Italy (!) and even Greece now.

This isn’t going well.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Maybe it’s just me as so many of you are in thrall to Labour.
I’m just not.

I'm not either because I remember the 70's too and it wasn't great. I do think we need to look at the way our utility companies are run (especially water) but I'm not sure that they should be privately run for shareholders. There are other organisations that not run for profit. Obviously you have to have good wages, decent management but everything else should be ploughed back into improving the services and infrastructure. I'd also like to see less big bonuses for companies that are failing and huge handouts to disgraced Executives.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Do you rember trying to get a landline installed in 1972 with British Telecom. I do. Madness. We had to share a ‘party line’! Picked up the phone to hear someone else was using it. Rose tinted spex as I say and that’s just one example.

Choice of provider is better.

Labour will turn the clock back. The rich taxpayers are leaving the country in drives - going to Portugal, Italy (!) and even Greece now.

This isn’t going well.

Ted Heath again. Labour were not in government until 1974.

We'll see. I suspect that the triple lock will go and social care will be means tested in some format.

You are certainly not alone in your views FGT2 I completely agree.

I can vividly remember what life was like under a 70s socialist government.
There is no way I want a repeat of that.

I too was newly married during that time, expecting our first baby and worried sick about the state of the country under Labour.

I think the wheels will soon come off this hard-left government when people realise that we have got Jeremy Corbyn-type policies on offer here.