Social care should be fully returned to the public sector, writes David Hinchliffe, while Pam Clarke says privatisation has been a failed experiment and Roger Fisken says Labour should defend high taxes for decent public service provision
Your editorial concerning Boris Johnson’s announcement on health and social care funding (7 September) rightly draws attention to the detrimental effects of the organisational split between two branches of the same tree. The ludicrous situation of having free care on one side and charges on the other is made even more laughable when no one is able to establish the division between the two with any certainty.
Pre-Tony Blair, the Labour party was seriously looking at the idea of a formal merger between the NHS and social care, and the principle has been endorsed by the Commons’ health committee on a number of occasions. The extension of universal taxpayer-funded provision to enable free social care hasn’t just been a problem for the Conservatives, but also for New Labour. However, alongside a gradual return of social care to the public sector, it is the only way to effectively address what Johnson terms the “crisis” in the sector, and your editorial correctly points out how this could be funded.
