Andy Burnham has called for major social care reform in England, saying the current system is bad for everybody and pressing ahead with talks that could reshape how care is funded. The social care reform debate moved back to the center this week after he said cross-party discussions with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would begin later.
Burnham also asked Baroness Casey, who is leading a review of social care, to bring forward her report. She is now due to set out recommendations in 2027, and her work will also examine how any changes might be paid for. BBC Verify has looked at four broad ways England could change the system, each with a different price tag and political risk.
One option is a lifetime cap on care costs, which would mean the government pays once a person’s bills pass a set threshold. A 2011 commission led by economist Andrew Dilnot proposed a cap of £35,000 and estimated the plan would cost between £1.3bn and £2.2bn a year at the time. That figure would be higher now because of inflation and an older population. The coalition government under David Cameron accepted the recommendations, but implementation was pushed back after the 2015 election.
Another route would be to change the means test that decides who gets local authority help with residential care. In England, people can currently qualify only if their assets, including their home, are worth less than £23,250. Boris Johnson’s government later planned to raise that threshold to £100,000, with an expected cost of £1.8bn a year over three years, though the proposal was later dropped by his Conservative successors. A different Conservative plan in 2017 would have counted a home in the means test for care at home, but it was attacked as a “dementia tax” and abandoned.
