Here’s the gist of the above:
The article’s argument is that Scotland’s free personal care model is the closest working version of what Andy Burnham is proposing.
Burnham has said that if Labour wins the next election he will create a National Care Service: person-centred, starting in the home, where “everyone contributes and everyone is covered,” meant to give peace of mind, protect savings, and value care workers.
Scotland already does part of this. Free personal care has existed since 2002 for over-65s and, since 2019, for all adults assessed as needing it. As under Burnham’s outline, people still pay accommodation and living costs in a care home. Those with assets above £36,750 generally pay those costs themselves; those below get varying council support.
It does not protect homes and savings.
A 1999 commission led by Sir Stewart Sutherland recommended free personal care funded by general taxation. UK Labour rejected it for England on the grounds it would subsidise the better-off. After devolution, the Labour-led Scottish executive adopted it.
Sebastian Rees of the IPPR says free personal care expands entitlement, is easy to understand, and can build a broad coalition, but will not solve every problem and will not be easy to replicate in England.
Adult social care spending per person in 2024–25 was £689 in Scotland versus £506 in England (IFS). Even so, the system is under strain from an ageing population and tight council budgets.
Rees estimates expanding free personal care to over-65s in England at about £6bn, and to all eligible adults at £10–12bn. The Health Foundation puts a comprehensive system that also covers care-home costs at about £18.7bn.
Comments below the FT report are interesting. Not one praises the Scottish system. Some repeat the ‘England is paying for Scotland’s excess’ line. Many point to obesity causing the crisis in care
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We certainly don’t need to look to England for advice on social care – or anything else – driven as they are by neo liberal economics or the “race to the bottom”.
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When Henry McLeish introduced this policy, he was attacked even more strongly by the Labour Government in Westminster than by the knee jerk opposition of the right wing media.
His ‘sin’ in the eyes of the baleful Bodger Broon was that he was actually using powers devolved to Holyrood to introduce free personal care, and, as ‘Iron Chancellor’ only he, The Bodger, could make such decisions. He believed the Scots could not run their own affairs so McLeish was seen as a mutineer. And in true, sleekit Bodger style, his cronies leaked information about a minor irregularity in the finances of McLeish’s constituency office. McLeish was clearly unaware of it and the sum involved was relatively small. But, the slavering hounds of the media attacked with their venomous nastiness and McLeish was forced to resign.
Since Mr Burnham was a protege of the Bodger, will he dare face Bodgerian wrath by introducing a policy that the Bodger decreed as bad?
Personally, I hope that a proper Care policy can be introduced, because the centralising tendency of the SNP made an arse of a Scottish Care policy.
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