Baroness Casey confirms her social care commission is examining impact of free social care

The former civil servant leading a commission on adult social care in England has told MPs she is examining the impact of scrapping home care charges but also suggested she is unlikely to call for it to be introduced immediately.

Baroness [Louise] Casey, chair of the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, was responding to questions from Ben Coleman, former deputy leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council and now the Labour MP for Chelsea and Fulham.

Hammersmith and Fulham is currently the only local authority in England* to have scrapped fees for social care at home, a policy it introduced in 2015 following years of activism from disabled people.

Coleman said the council’s policy had reduced the number of disabled and older people being admitted to care homes, and he asked if the commission was examining whether “it works to make it free because you save money elsewhere”.

In her response, Baroness Casey (pictured) suggested she was concerned about the cost of providing free home care.

She told the Commons health and social care committee yesterday (Wednesday): “I think both in Hammersmith and Fulham and if you look at Scotland [where personal care is free, but other aspects of independent living support such as assistance with shopping are not], I would say that it isn’t evidenced that it necessarily gets you less money spent on social care.

“It may stop people going into care homes, possibly, but does that mean that that’s a good thing or a bad thing?”

But she confirmed that the commission was examining the impact of introducing free adult social care.

She said: “We think it’s more complicated and it’s one of the things we are looking at, definitely.”

But she added: “When people say things like, ‘let’s have a national care service,’ are they saying we are suddenly going to find the money for everybody in some way, shape or form that means it will be a totally free care service available for people?”

And she pointed out that, in Hammersmith and Fulham, social care for those in residential homes is not free.

She added: “What I said at the very beginning is… that we want to look at everything and see how everything pieces together…”

And she suggested that any move to free social care might be a long-term, rather than a short-term, recommendation from the commission.

She told the committee: “I think we ought to just keep to looking at what would what the public would see as social care look like if they looked up in 2050, not what will make something easier necessarily now.

“We have to do both, so we have got to do some stuff that we get on with now and we have got to do I think quite a significant reform of what health and social care looks like [in the future].”

Baroness Casey told the committee that cross-party talks – which are part of her commission’s work – “are going to be difficult” but “are going well at the moment”, with another session planned for the autumn, probably in September.

She added: “Everyone agrees with the diagnosis of the problem, the trick is going to be shifting from that to agreeing with what the solution is.”

She said a significant consultation with the public about adult social care, likely to be launched soon, would be “important and powerful” because “we can reflect that back” to politicians in the cross-party talks.

And she said this needed to be a “really deep dive and conversation with the British public” and that she intended to “do that really thoroughly and well”.

She stressed that she had been asked to produce her final report “by” 2028, and so it could be published next year, but she was “worried about going too soon” and told the committee: “I don’t want to get it wrong.”

The first phase of her report, which will set out a plan for how to implement a national care service, is due to be published this year, followed by the “national conversation” about future provision of adult social care.

She also said that her continuing worry was that local government is just seen as a “key partner… in the world of health”.

She said: “The [NHS] acute trusts run the show and local authorities are bit parts in whether they get the crumbs that fall from the table.

“And until that psychologically changes, and they are seen as equal partners, then I can’t see how you move forward with this…”

The care minister, Stephen Kinnock, later told the committee that he wanted Baroness Casey to produce her final report earlier than 2028.

He said: “I will tell you quite clearly that I did not agree with the position that the chancellor [Rachel Reeves] and the prime minister [Sir Keir Starmer] took in terms of the timeframe that was given to Louise Casey.

“I think that it needs to be brought forward and I hope that we can work at pace as and when we have a new prime minister to ensure that we have got the Treasury, and No 10 and the Department of Health and Social Care, working in lockstep and recognising the urgency of the issue.”

He said: “I am very pleased to hear Baroness Casey’s view today that she’s ready to move in a more accelerated fashion and I would fully support that.”

Meanwhile, a new report by Inclusion Scotland and Self Directed Support Scotland has revealed the “profound impact” of cuts to social care in Scotland.

Based on a survey conducted between November 2025 and January 2026, the findings “raise serious concerns that funding cuts, tighter eligibility criteria and changes to support arrangements are undermining the choice, control and independent living” that legislation on Scotland’s system of self-directed support was intended to enable.

Inclusion Scotland said the report “highlights a growing gap between Scotland’s commitment to improving and co-designing social care and the reality experienced by many disabled people, who are facing reduced support, less flexibility and increasing barriers to independent living”.

*Tower Hamlets council in east London briefly scrapped adult home care charges from April last year but has now reimposed some charges