.... and he is so right.
He is basically saying that it is an issue that politicians have ducked for decades - the can is always kicked down the road every time it comes up.
He is saying he is not going to duck the issue, in the full knowledge that this will alienate him with some voters and entrenched interests. He rightly points out that the NHS, of which we are so proud in spite of its imperfections, did not happen without the courage to be radical, and the same goes for the care system.
I am behind him on this. I have experienced the care system both as professional and consumer and it is totally broken and the distress this causes to people is incalculable - he recognises that the government has a moral duty to deal with this and that it will not be easy.
Funding will be the crux of the matter and I am quite sure he knows this - it is what has caused the cowardly politicians to throw in the towel and walk away from it.
There are models of social care in other countries that we can aspire to and learn from.
Perpetuating a system where family carers are unsupported, professional carers are undervalued and underpaid, and tortuous processes have to be navigated to get what is needed simply cannot go on. Nor can big care providers lining their pockets at the expense of ordinary people struggling to do right by their loved ones.
Go for it Andy - I admire your courage.
Who was the labour woman bawling her eyes out. I was a little surprised but I don't know her background and if she has struggled with care for a loved one, I can understand it. If not, I can't imagine getting up and making a speech if I was that emotional. Deep breaths, lady!
Oreo
While changing things regarding social care I would urge AB to bring back convalescent homes for all ages, but particularly for older hospital patients who just need some tlc and building up again before being sent home.
I agree. We’ve been saying this for years! Also building places that are helpful with recuperation etc. My son’s children continued to go to school during lockdowns because their mum works for the NHS. The school had been a hospital many years ago and because of that is light and airy and was pretty much covid free. So convalescent homes where people would be exposed to light and fresh air would make sense.
Fallingstar
How about instead of harping on about the 1970s we look at the years 1945 to 1951 and the political and social changes that followed on from the Attlee government, changes that mean we still have the NHS - just about - free prescriptions for certain groups - it used to be everyone, and social housing - though that is now dwindling.
We also had nationalised utilities and transport.
It wasn’t the 1970s that damaged this country irrevocably but the Thatcher years, when deregulation, privatisation, and the decimation of the primary and secondary sectors which led to generational unemployment in large parts of this country, and getting rid of the Keynesian economic model, has now made it nigh on impossible to get out of the quagmire she left as her legacy for generations to come.
The end of the 1970s was a blip in history, Thatcher was a national disaster.
The only government that ever bettered this country was Attlee’s.
Absolutely agree.
As a pensioner I pay a small amount of tax and would happily pay more for social care but I would expect that it would revert to public ownership. In fact, I’d happily pay more direct rather than indirect taxes. What makes anyone think that if direct tax rates go down it will be a better deal for the majority? All that happens is that they go up as extra indirect taxes which will eventually cost more.
I was impressed by AB’s speech and will watch with interest to see what progress is made.
Fallingstar
How about instead of harping on about the 1970s we look at the years 1945 to 1951 and the political and social changes that followed on from the Attlee government, changes that mean we still have the NHS - just about - free prescriptions for certain groups - it used to be everyone, and social housing - though that is now dwindling.
We also had nationalised utilities and transport.
It wasn’t the 1970s that damaged this country irrevocably but the Thatcher years, when deregulation, privatisation, and the decimation of the primary and secondary sectors which led to generational unemployment in large parts of this country, and getting rid of the Keynesian economic model, has now made it nigh on impossible to get out of the quagmire she left as her legacy for generations to come.
The end of the 1970s was a blip in history, Thatcher was a national disaster.
The only government that ever bettered this country was Attlee’s.
Well quite.
Fragmentation of accountability, greed by rich corporations, loss of community cohesion ... we are still struggling with all this. And it is the people at the bottom of the pile who are struggling as always.
AB is talking about what we are looking at as a moral issue and I have waited a long time for a PM to spell this out.
I just hope that individualism and selfishness are not so far advanced that we cannot use his leadership to try and recoup what we have lost.
Primrose53
Just seen a Labour woman making a fool of herself by bawling her eyes out on the podium at the conference. Yvette Cooper had to come on and give her a hug and then push her away from the mic.
From between the sobs I think she said she was so emotional about AB’s speech and what he is going to do about the care system. BBC News.
That was Rebecca Eve Brocklebank from Bristol East Labour group She was an impromptu first time conference speaker.
She was speaking about her free home care campaign with reference to the late Hammersmith and Fulham Labour MP Iain Coleman who, as a council leader in the 1990s, had made his London borough the only place in England where care at home was free.
He died on September 20, 2025, at the age of 67 having suffered 20 strokes in the previous decade. He's had his first stroke at the age of just 46.
In her husband’s memory, Dame Sally Powell has starting a national campaign that asks for care at home, free at the point of need, to be available everywhere.
www.politicshome.com/news/article/dame-sally-powells-campaign-free-home-care-memory-iain-coleman
Ms Brocklebank was speaking in tribute to this work. She spoke too of dedicated care staff working for poverty wages. That was why she was emotional about Andy Burnham making social care a government priority.
You can watch her speak here at 49:40:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IY9qC0rwlY
She was tearful but not bawling. Have some compassion for people who are trying to make life a little easier for those who need help.
I will hold on to my enthusiasm until such times as we find out what is going to happen in detail, and when the electorate begins to see the practices being rolled out across the U.K.
She was tearful but not bawling. Have some compassion for people who are trying to make life a little easier for those who need help.
Thank you for explaining, Graphite. "Bawling" was not intended to be derogatory but I only caught a glimpse and that is what it looked like as she collapsed into Yvette's arms. I am all for people trying to help but she has had a while to get her act together regarding Andy's emotional speech. Don'tcha know we are supposed to be Brits with a stiff upper lip! 
DaisyAnneReturns
Your point seems to be a totally different one to Whitewave's Maizie. Why can't she argue here own?
Whitewave, I wonder if the only fair way is national insurance - in the same way we pay for the NHS?
The trouble with that is that it is only paid by those in work. Non-workers, whatever their household income of savings don't pay it, which is not at all fair.
Luckygirl3
‘ AB is talking about what we are looking at as a moral issue and I have waited a long time for a PM to spell this out.
I just hope that individualism and selfishness are not so far advanced that we cannot use his leadership to try and recoup what we have lost.’
I hope this too and am just glad he got up and made ‘care’ a moral issue and not a transactional one.
It is a long time overdue.
Politics is supposed to be about the people, and maybe, just maybe, he can bring it back to the people.
Basgetti
DiamondLily
He wants to fund it by removing the triple lock from 2030.
Which won’t be enough to fund it.
But, as ever, it’s style over substance with him.It’s a good start.
He isn't just "removing" the Triple lock, he is replacing it with a " Double lock". The proposed “double lock” is intended to change how the UK State Pension rises from April 2030.
Under the current triple lock, the State Pension rises each year by whichever is highest of:
Average earnings growth
Inflation
2.5%
Burnham’s announced system would, on the face of it, remove the annual earnings-growth test. The pension would instead rise by at least the higher of:
Inflation, or
2.5%
The government's detailed proposal says there will also be a mechanism ensuring that the State Pension maintains its value relative to average earnings over the longer term.
At present those at the bottom will loose everything that they strived for their whole lives. That is certainly not fair.
Where is your cut off point please, of "those at the bottom"?
I guess if your assets are valued at £75k, and you stay in a care home for the average 18 months, at a cost of £1k per week, you would have nothing left, except the savings maximum allowed.
Reading some of these comments, you can see why "care" has been kicked into the long-grass by successive governments.
Whatever proposals Burnham comes up with, whether sound or not, will be automatically dismissed by some simply because he's the Labour PM.
I know mathematically we are a multi-party system - but it only functions within a two-party framework - which creates a constant tension in British political life. And it's so depressing.
The common tropes that were applied to both Right and Left politicians - and their respective parties - simply maintained this tension; out of which was born Reform and Restore (did they just look under the letter 'R' in the dictionary to choose those names?)... and Burnham. Further entrenching the Right/Left divide, and furthering creeping instability.
There is one thing for certain, if care services are to be improved those with the most wealth will pay more, there is no other way.
Keeping your wealth so that it can be inherited by your children at the expense of the poor suffering longer is not a moral way forward. However the easy way to improve care is to increase taxation, while leaving the personal funding over a threshold.
The poor have free social care and free care homes??
The people who have no assets at all have free social care. The people who have some assets, but only a small amount, stand to lose everything because they have to pay for their care. The unfairness is that the families of people with very few assets stand to inherit nothing under the present system.it perpetuates the divide between haves and have nots.
fancythat
^At present those at the bottom will loose everything that they strived for their whole lives. That is certainly not fair.^
Where is your cut off point please, of "those at the bottom"?
... and why would they "loose everything"? It seems to me the right wing press are behaving hysterically as ard some of their followers.
But care home fees and care at home should be paid for by the recipient if the money is available. Two years in a care home is average and its means tested for the first 12 weeks. If families feel deprived of an inheritance, there’s the option to care at home?
I think, rereading, that fancythat actually meant At present those at the bottom CURRENTLY loose everything that they strived for their whole lives. That is certainly not fair.
Perhaps you could confirm.
ronib
But care home fees and care at home should be paid for by the recipient if the money is available. Two years in a care home is average and its means tested for the first 12 weeks. If families feel deprived of an inheritance, there’s the option to care at home?
Why? If we can run a free at the point of need NHS why shouldn't that include care? You would then pay for that insurance over the years out of tax.
DaisyAnneReturns
I think, rereading, that fancythat actually meant At present those at the bottom CURRENTLY loose everything that they strived for their whole lives. That is certainly not fair.
Perhaps you could confirm.
I copied and posted something a poster said yesterday?
Sorry, am barely in the house lately.
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
SORRY! - Wrong thread!
DaisyAnneReturns
ronib
But care home fees and care at home should be paid for by the recipient if the money is available. Two years in a care home is average and its means tested for the first 12 weeks. If families feel deprived of an inheritance, there’s the option to care at home?
Why? If we can run a free at the point of need NHS why shouldn't that include care? You would then pay for that insurance over the years out of tax.
ronib what do you mean?
Care at home by whom? Do you mean by family or by carers?
Using carers is also very expensive. I’ve just looked up how much it costs just to have someone sleep overnight. No care, just sleeping and responding eg. calling an ambulance. It’s approximately £100/night!
We have my mother living with us but there’s nothing the matter with her, only old age, so we can cope. We are retired now and the grandchildren are old enough to look after themselves but a few years ago we were both working and doing a bit of child care.
That meant that four of us were working and paying tax.
One of us, at least, would have had to give up work and that would have been expensive too.
There is no easy answer. It all costs a lot, not only financially.
youtu.be/KaNDIIdJk-s?is=u9UHs_hBjEbB995w
This is what I meant to post.
Private Eye team discuss Social Care.
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