Has Andy Burnham already revealed how he plans to fund free adult social care?

Andy Burnham looks set to make adult social care reform a centrepiece of his agenda, five years after suggesting that a free, personalised National Care Service could be funded through a 10 per cent care levy.

Although he did not mention social care reform in his first speech as the new prime minister, outside No 10 on Monday, he briefed journalists on the day he moved into No 10 that he was determined to reform adult social care, and particularly how it is funded.

He told reporters he was “ready to use some of my political capital on this issue” and that it would not be “defensible” to leave office without having reformed social care.

He also told them he wanted social care to “operate on the NHS principle” that it should be free at the point of use, and that the current social care system was “broken”.

Burnham has repeatedly called for an end to all social care charging, telling a conference of disabled people’s organisations three years ago that care charges were “an abomination”.

Two years before that, in 2021, he told a fringe meeting at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton (pictured) that it was only the “cowardice of politicians” that was preventing a solution to the social care crisis.

He said that the social care and NHS systems needed to “speak the same language”, which meant “free at the point of use, based on need, not ability to pay”.

He stressed at the conference in 2021 that his idea of a National Care Service was also about providing independent living for disabled people.

He said: “This is the thing when you hear the phrase National Care Service: people feel it is going to be top down or a medical model of support.

“Absolutely it doesn’t have to be like that at all. It should start with very personal, individual support in the home.”

He added: “Let’s make it really explicit. A National Care Service of the kind I’ve described this afternoon would massively enhance the lives of disabled people in this country, as long as it was personalised and it was individual and there was control there.

“It could hugely support independent living. It could give individuals and their families much greater peace of mind about the quality of what’s being provided.

“Too often that’s an afterthought in this debate and it needs to be a central consideration when we are talking about what the benefits of this system would be.

“The human benefits would be enormous on a system of this kind.”

Burnham said he believed the argument for such a system was “being slowly won”.

Crucially, he told the meeting that this could be funded through a care levy of 10 per cent on “everyone’s assets, savings and homes”, with a payment plan possibly to be agreed when someone reaches the age of 65.

He said: “I don’t think you can say we are going to have a new system of social care without the older generation making a contribution to that.

“Because it’s a care levy and not an inheritance tax, it is linked to what you are getting… even if you don’t need care in your lifetime… you’re getting peace of mind, the peace of mind the NHS provides for you.”

Dennis Queen, chair of Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), a disabled people’s organisation (DPO) which worked closely with Burnham during his time as Greater Manchester mayor, said she was “hopeful” after hearing that he hoped to reform social care.

She said: “He’s learned a lot about social care from working with the recent Greater Manchester Social Care Commission and our Greater Manchester Mayoral Panel of DPOs, which is coordinated by our organisation, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People.”

But she noted that he had not yet made a clear commitment on what any reforms would entail, although the coalition would “be delighted to hear that Andy plans to abolish care charges”, a GMCDP agenda “that he rightly backed” as mayor.

But she said his job was now to “represent the Labour party”, which was “a very different job, so in that sense disabled people need to be a bit realistic in our expectations” even though “he has worked with GMCDP and our wider community”, so he knows what they want.

She also spoke of concern that he had pledged to build council houses, rather than accessible council houses, following Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to slash Conservative targets for accessible housing.

And she warned: “All governments in the last 30-plus years have known what disabled people are asking for, in terms of working towards equality and liberation, Labour even sometimes making promises to our voters – but successive governments have still worked against us, once our votes were cast.”

Charli Thompson, a member of the steering group of the Roadmap to Independent Living Coalition, welcomed Burnham’s commitment to making social care free at the point of need.

But she said that any reforms “must do more than end charging” and must “enable older and disabled people to participate equally in society and live full, independent lives, with support identified according to what people need to achieve those outcomes, not what the system can afford.

“Without these fundamental reforms, we risk investing more money into a system that continues to hide unmet need and funds support that undermines people’s right to wellbeing.”

Glasgow Disability Alliance (GDA) also welcomed Burnham’s commitment this week to social care reform and particularly to “looking at the funding of social care alongside the NHS principle of being free at the point of use” which was “something disabled people and DPOs in Scotland have long called for”.

Tressa Burke, GDA’s chief executive, said: “Good social care is not just a good investment in people’s lives – it’s an investment in our society.

“GDA members agree with the new prime minister who has previously stated that care charges were an abomination and so we hope to see an end to these as they plunge disabled people further into poverty.

“We hope that the new prime minister works meaningfully and purposefully with the first minister [of Scotland] to make sure that disabled people in Scotland also benefit from these commitments and that funding is enabled to deliver this in Scotland too.”

The disabled women’s organisation WinVisible said: “We want real improvement in support services for us to stay in our own home, and for support to be free at the point of need, without merging the NHS and social care into one huge institution making decisions over our heads.

“Unwaged family carers deserve to be financially recognised – no sign of that so far.

“Like last year, we are ready to defend our benefits and independent living rights.”

Baroness [Louise] Casey is currently leading a commission on adult social care in England on behalf of the government but is not set to produce her final report until 2028.

Stephen Kinnock – who was care minister at the time and has since been promoted to Welsh secretary by Burnham – told the Commons health and social care committee last month that he would like her to produce her final report earlier than 2028.