The Prime Minister will have to steel himself if he is to deliver social care reform

The Prime Minister’s pledge to fix social care is to be welcomed. The fact that Andy Burnham has mentioned reform on numerous occasions, including promising to set a “broad direction” of his social care plans in his Labour Party conference speech in Liverpool on Tuesday, is reassuring.

While there is a broad consensus that social care reform is necessary, how this reform is delivered, more importantly funded, is another thing.

The PM says nothing is off the table when it comes to paying for reforms. The irony is that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson came closest to potentially grasping the nettle when he proposed a health and social care levy. Plans that were duly ditched by his successor Liz Truss.

Burnham finds himself in a difficult position because Labour’s current manifesto includes commitments not to hike income tax, VAT or national insurance for workers. And when Burnham found himself in government the last time, his plans to fund social care reform through a levy on estates were labelled the “death tax”. It is also evident that tax rises would be unpalatable for a lot of voters, who are already hard-pressed as they are.

The reality is that social care reform will have to be paid for somehow. While that may mean additional taxation, the Government also needs to look at drawing out efficiencies from the NHS.

In theory, a fully functioning social care system should ease the burden on the health service and remove it from the constant cycle of crisis after crisis. The easing of that burden also needs to be accompanied by a reallocation of funding to the social care sector.

The PM needs to steel himself because while there is an acceptance that social care needs to be fixed, how that is done is where the issue has run into a cul-de-sac.