Labour<\/a> party conference began in Liverpool, Burnham ruled out implementing reforms before the next general election \u2013 currently due in 2029. He said Labour would put the proposals into its next general election manifesto so that voters could give their endorsement, in the hope of reducing the risk that political attacks would sink the policy.<\/p>\nAndy Burnham being interviewed at No 10 North in Manchester ahead of the Labour Party annual conference in Liverpool. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The prime minister acknowledged that there were risks in a nationwide reform, likely to be costly and complicated to implement. \u201cSomebody needs to grasp the nettle. I will be the one to do that,\u201d he said. \u201cI realise it might require me to spend some political capital, that it might make me unpopular with some, but that isn\u2019t going to stop [me].\u201d<\/p>\n
The current social care system in England was \u201cas unfair as American healthcare\u201d where the \u201cmost vulnerable in society can lose everything, they can be wiped out\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
He told Kuenssberg: \u201cI\u2019m going to rip the plaster off, if I can put it that way, because someone has to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham declined to give details about how a new system would be funded, saying a review was continuing and promising more details in his conference speech on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The death two weeks ago of his father, Roy, who had Alzheimer\u2019s, had pushed him on, he said, as he praised the \u201chumour, humanity and skill\u201d of those who cared for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I look at the people who cared for my dad, they must just feel invisible to the political class,\u201d he said. \u201cThey work day in, day out, with huge humour and humanity and skill in what they do \u2026 caring for other people\u2019s parents on poverty pay. How have we let this go on so long?\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham claimed that the annual cost of delivering an NHS-style social care service was \u201cnot as high\u201d as the \u00a318bn that had been suggested \u2013 and said he would take his time to work out how it could be fairly funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge in the public finances is real,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it has to be done carefully, without putting extra strain on the public purse. But I will bring forward proposals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if social care was going to be like the NHS, free at the point of use and paid for through general taxation, Burnham replied: \u201cIt will be a system of that kind. So everyone contributes, everyone\u2019s covered, but not precisely necessarily in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS. This is for Baroness Casey to advise us on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Changing social care has long been a political priority for Burnham. As health secretary in 2009, he proposed a national care service modelled on the NHS, but the Conservatives called it a \u201cdeath tax\u201d because it proposed a system funded by a new tax on estates after people died. Labour went on to lose the general election in 2010 and the plan was abandoned.<\/p>\n
Andy Burnham on stage at the Labour party conference. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Asked if he would go back to that system, he said that nothing was off the table. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m going straight back to the proposal that I had in 2010,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trying to head off inevitable blocks from opposition parties, Burnham said that though consensus was necessary, scaremongering would block vital reform. \u201cIf we continue to approach this issue with politics as usual, where people are scoring points and they\u2019re taking a proposal and then trying to frighten the public at home about it, we will never fix it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd can we honestly justify that? That politics in this country cannot face an issue like this and deal with it because we\u2019re too scared of it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham acknowledged there was \u201creal concern\u201d in the financial markets about the state of the British economy, pointing to the \u201cfebrile\u201d state of global backdrop.<\/p>\n
The prime minister said he was willing to cut government spending to balance the books \u2013 but also that he believed money could be saved by taking a more \u201cproductive\u201d long-term approach to issues such as rough sleeping and youth unemployment.<\/p>\n
Amid concerns that the government could be hemmed in at the budget by the parlous state of the public finances, he said that the chancellor, John Healey, would be \u201chighly prudent\u201d in running the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t do what the previous Tory government did and take risks with the economy that are actually still hurting us right now,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham has said that he is going to \u201crip the plaster off\u201d to fix the broken social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-784998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}