By yet again kicking social care reform into the long grass, the government has wasted a moment of national solidarity
The occasion was unusually austere, pared-down and sombre. But though the form of the Queen’s speech ceremony on Tuesday was dictated by Covid, the substance was all about moving beyond it. As the country gradually but steadily reopens, after 15 months of total or partial lockdown, this was the first major opportunity for Boris Johnson to fill out his vision for post-pandemic Britain.
That a single, prevaricating sentence was devoted to the country’s broken social care system represents a shamefully missed opportunity. Covid, in the most tragic manner imaginable, has focused public attention on the myriad flaws in the way that we look after elderly people and the vulnerable in society. The sector’s cinderella status in relation to the NHS; the woefully inadequate and unjust arrangements to fund it; the grotesque undervaluing of those who work in it: all are scandals that the nation recognises and wants fixed.
