𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In its ‘Change’ Manifesto in 2024 Labour promised to reform social care by setting up a National Care Service.

During the General Election campaign, Wes Streeting promised to honour the commitment of the previous Government to implement a cap on the lifetime costs of personal care at £86,000 from October 2025.

Within weeks of taking office, at the same time as scrapping the Winter Fuel Payment, Labour did precisely the opposite.

The cap on lifetime costs was permanently abandoned, and instead of setting up a National Care Service, Labour proposed a Commission on Social Care to ensure there would be no meaningful reforms to social care before the early 2030s (if at all).

Labour refuses to define what they mean by a National Care Service; is it a parallel, powerful social care body on the lines of the NHS, or simply a continuation of the existing system with a few weak national guidelines and targets?

Nobody knows, including Baroness Casey, who is running the Commission.

Every social care expert and charity privately agrees that setting up the Commission was a deliberate and cynical delaying tactic by the Government.

Wes Streeting has confirmed that there will be no extra cash for social care before 2030/31. It has an unbelievably long timetable with its Final Report not due until the end of 2028, four years into this Parliament.

The Commission is a tragic cosplay and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Charities align with the Commission because they are overly reliant on Government contracts and grants and are afraid to be too critical.

Meanwhile, as Baroness Casey plays the long game, millions of older people are living with indignity and discomfort in their final years, because they cannot get the social care support they need to continue living in their own homes.

Silver Voices is not prepared to put up with this gaslighting of the British public, which is why we are campaigning, with a petition on the official Government website, for the Casey Commission to be abolished and for the Government to crack on with reforms that were promised in 2024 and are so long overdue.