I Will Use Political Capital To Tackle Social Care – New UK PM

New Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK), Andy Burnham, has promised to use some of his political capital to tackle the nation’s social care crisis, stressing that this has been an issue close to his heart.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, just hours after he entered his new Downing Street office, Burnham told reporters about his father having Alzheimer’s disease and how often those people who should be looked after in a social care setting were using an already stretched public health service for help.

Burnham, a former mayor of Greater Manchester in north-western England, has long spoken of the need to reform social care and find ways to pay for it, saying that while governments have prevaricated on the issue, many older people have “lost their homes and their savings” to pay for care.

“I think the country needs to step back here and say, ‘How have we let a situation kind of just roll on, ‌where we know it’s a major issue, and yet no one’s got the courage to fix it?’ I think that’s quite damning … of my generation of politicians,” he said.

Burnham, who first tried to reform social care funding when he was health minister under Gordon Brown’s premiership, said he did not want to repeat what governments had done for “as close to 30 years” of ducking the issue.

Social care, unlike the state-run National Health Service, is not free for most people, and successive prime ministers have considered measures, including capping ⁠its cost, but have struggled to win support for what would be a pricey policy.

“It’s not defensible,” he said. “We need to face it and fix it,” he said.

Burnham also said he will be “looking at” the tax-free personal allowance ahead of his first Budget in the autumn but stressed that changing it would be “difficult” in the current economic circumstances.

He said he had “heard issues related to the personal allowance more than anything on the doorsteps in Makerfield” and said, “it’s people on the lowest incomes perhaps who’ve most been affected”.

He added: “It’s difficult because changing the threshold is not without significant consequences, but I’m looking at it.”

Asked if he could pay for a change by reintroducing the 50p top rate of tax, he said it was “premature to say that”.

Burnham also said he “does not want to leave office” without reforming the social care system. He said that Westminster’s record on the issue over the last 30 years was “not defensible”.

The new prime minister added, “How many people have lost their homes and their savings in that time? We need to face it and fix it.”

Speaking to reporters shortly after his speech on the steps of Downing Street earlier, he said he was “ready to use some of my political capital” on the issue.

Burnham recommitted to sticking to the previous government’s fiscal rules but said he would “use any flexibility within them”. He added: “None of this is about taking risks with the economy”.