Andy Burnham has rightly made fixing social care a top priority and seems, on the face of it, to be genuinely interested in reaching a cross party consensus. Social care has been a priority for Liberal Democrats for a long time as well – I shed more than one or two tears when I first […]
Op-eds
It is not just about paying for social care
Thirty years after the then Government established the “Royal Commission on Long Term Care”, five years after the 2021 Health and Social Care Act was to sort out social care once and for all, social care is still in crisis and, at long last. moving up the agenda of Government. The NHS and social care […]
Hidden meanings in social care
Andy Burnham has promised to ‘fix’ social care and to ‘use some of his political capital on the issue’. The first steps are expected this week. Ed Davey, who has campaigned strongly on the issue, promises to work with him on a cross-party basis. All good. The problem is that people mean very different things […]
Mathew on Monday – Andy Burnham must act on Social Care now
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is right about one thing: social care reform demands serious thought. But she is wrong to insist that the answer cannot involve asking those with the broadest shoulders (the very richest) bear the biggest burden and contribute a bit more through taxation. If we are serious about fixing one of Britain’s […]
National Conversations we need to have
Nearly a year ago the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) set out its understanding of the transformed international environment this country now faces, and called for the government to lead ‘a national conversation’ on how we should respond. Yet since then there has been silence from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and only muffled warnings […]
We need to talk about the end of life
We need to talk about how the UK supports its growing number of older people, and in particular about the end of life. One of the many weaknesses of British politics is that its structure does not make it easy to link related issues, But the age of retirement, pensions for the elderly, the rising […]
We can start to improve social care by tackling attitudes towards migrants
If ever there’s an issue – or a sub-section of a broader issue – that sums up the sense that the UK is broken, even eight months after a new government was supposed to set a new direction, it’s social care. The crisis in social care has been recognised for decades, but successive governments have […]
This Government needs help from the Lib Dems
The Liberal Democrats, and the Liberals before them, have not had much time in power over the last century. 1906 was the last time a majority Liberal government was elected, though it has been the junior partner in coalition governments since then. However, the Liberals were certainly the party of ideas in the last century. […]
Social Care: Fixing the future and owning the now
In December 2023, I was an intern at Prospect Magazine in Westminster as my first semester at Queen Mary University of London drew to a close. It was here that I first flipped through the magazine’s Minister for the Future report – produced with Nesta, a UK-based innovation agency focused on social good. It got […]
Wera Hobhouse calls for action to tackle eating disorders
Anyone who has supported a loved one with an eating disorder will appreciate Wera Hobhouse’s tireless efforts to get better support and services for those living with these terrible and distressing conditions. 1.25 million people have an eating disorder in the UK. Eating disorders can impact anybody, and everybody. As chair of the Eating disorders […]