Burnham pledges NHS-style social care for England

Andy Burnham has promised to overhaul England’s social care system, saying he wants to create a universal service that would be free for people to use.

Official response and confirmed impact

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the prime minister said the plans would be included in Labour’s next manifesto, meaning changes won’t be introduced before the next general election.

‘I’m going to rip the plaster off, if I can put it that way, because someone has to do it,’ he said.

Burnham didn’t give details about how the new system would be funded, saying a review by Baroness Casey was still under way.

Casey was originally tasked by Keir Starmer to deliver her review on social care in 2028, but this has been brought forward to next summer.

When asked whether the new social care service would work in a similar way to the NHS, Burnham said: ‘It will be a system of that kind.

So everyone contributes, everyone’s covered, but not precisely necessarily in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS.’