• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Labour conference: Mystery over Burnham’s social care integration plans

Labour conference: Mystery over Burnham’s social care integration plans

By John Pring on 2nd October 2012 Category: News Archive

Listen

A Labour government would move to “integrate” social care with the NHS, the shadow health secretary has told the party’s annual conference.

Andy Burnham told delegates in Manchester that he wanted an end to the current three “separate, fragmented” systems for health, social care and mental health.

Burnham told the conference that “all options must be considered, including full integration of health and social care”.

But, despite suggestions at fringe events earlier in the week, Burnham did not reveal any further details about possible plans for this single, integrated health and social care service.

No-one from the party has so far been able to comment on whether more detailed plans for integration had been dropped from the speech.

Burnham also called in his speech for an end to the “care lottery” and the need for a “clear, national entitlement to what physical, mental and social care we can afford, so people can see what’s free and what must be paid for”.

He also attacked a social care system that allowed care workers to be “exploited in a cut-price, minimum wage business” and called for them to be “held in the same regard as NHS staff”.

At a fringe event organised by health and social care organisations earlier in the week, Burnham said that it was “a scandal” that care and support was “still a minimum wage industry”.

He also suggested that he did not believe that the recommendations suggested by the Dilnot Commission on long-term care funding would completely resolve the crisis in funding.

He said: “Dilnot is a step but it doesn’t solve everything.”

Burnham suggested that the Dilnot report was “a very traditional bid” for funding from the Treasury, which was accused last week of being to blame for the government’s failure to deliver reform.

But he also dismissed widespread calls from across the disability sector for free care and support to be funded through a rise in general taxation, just as the NHS is.

He said this would not be right because the current generation of older people would be benefiting from free care when they hadn’t contributed to it through increased taxes during their working lives.

It was left to Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, to deliver a reminder to the party that social care was not “just an issue about older people”.

He told the fringe event that he had spoken to a service-user whose support was being cut, who was constantly being challenged about the hours of support they should receive, and who was now worried that they would soon no longer be able to leave their house, because of a lack of support.

Another disabled person has told Hawkes that because he was unable to tie his own shoelaces – and doesn’t have the support he needs – he has been forced to ask strangers passing his house to tie his laces for him.

Hawkes said the consequences of the government failing to find a funding solution would be “incredibly serious”, with thousands of disabled people left unable to wash, dress, or leave their homes.

He said it was necessary to ask “whether we want a country that treats older people and disabled people with dignity and respect, or a country that simply keeps them alive”.

Elsewhere at the conference, Yvette Cooper, the shadow women and equalities minister, and shadow home secretary, pointed in her speech on equality to the examples of gold-medal winning Paralympians such as Ellie Simmonds, Hannah Cockroft, Jonnie Peacock and David Weir.

She said their success showed “how much more all of us can achieve, whatever our circumstances, when we support each other, rather than leaving people to sink or to swim, alone”.

She said: “It is a vision of a society that supports those who care for children or for elderly relatives, who are getting older, or who have a disability, to do all they can do. Be all they can be.”

And in his conference speech, Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, said it was “morally wrong” that more than 70 per cent of the prison population had two or more mental health conditions.

He told delegates: “We’ve replaced the Victorian asylum with the Victorian prison.

“Festering in prison with serious mental health problems that can and should be treated is morally wrong.”

He said the next Labour government would “open a new front in the war on re-offending” by giving a justice minister “specific responsibility for rooting out mental health problems in our criminal justice system”.

3 October 2010

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web