‘Government’s proposed social care funding reforms are unfair’

Plans to reform the funding of social care have been recently announced by the government and are being rushed through Parliament with minimal debate.

Under the government’s proposals, a carer in Bristol earning £21,400 will pay £190 more each year while an individual with investment or rental income of the same amount will only pay an extra £85. This is unfair.

They have not only imposed a new tax on workers – but not the independently wealthy – but they have also failed to gain a cross-party consensus for services that are too important to be the subject of a hurried political fix.

In the process, they have broken their manifesto promises. Come to think of it, where exactly is that £350 million a week for the NHS?

Liberal Democrats would increase taxes on wealth (including through Capital Gains Tax) and boost health and social care services through a one per cent increase in income tax. This would be much more progressive than the government’s plan to raise National Insurance.

Boris Johnson said he had a plan for social care when he became prime minister in 2019. Unfortunately, like his Brexit solution, this was not as “oven-ready” as he made out. Rather than seeking to collaborate across party lines and build agreement on long-term plans to tackle the issue, short-term headlines are being put before developing workable proposals that command widespread respect.

There has long been a broad consensus on the need to better integrate health and social care and to clarify and simplify their management but there has also been a reluctance to really effectively deal with the issue. A comprehensive long-term rethink should be inclusive, ethical, and fair, rather than be founded on political expediency.

A proper plan would put local communities at its core.

Social care operates through the community, council, and commercial sectors, and involves GP surgeries, hospitals, and more. An effective social care system would involve empowering local government to create a service that is much more integrated with both the NHS and the communities it serves. Unfortunately, this government has tended to marginalise councils and starve them of the resources required to build better services, and it has resisted pleas for collaboration across party lines.

The prize of cooperation is bigger than just improving care for those who need it. Effective, quality and adequately rewarded care will benefit the NHS. For a start, it would help ease the problem of bed-blocking which is just the most widely-known aspect of poor care integration. A better-resourced social care service would result in a better-resourced NHS, improving general health and wellbeing.

A thorough review of the system should also seek to ensure that the millions of unpaid carers in our society are recognised and rewarded.

Social care is too important for one party to go it alone. Liberal Democrats will continue to fight for a consensus approach to the management and integration of public health, NHS, and social care objectives and budgets – and for it to be funded fairly and progressively: better care, fairly funded.

Anthony Negus is a former Lib Dem councillor and Andrew Brown is the deputy leader of Bristol’s Lib Dem councillor group.

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