Streeting dodges care charges question for four minutes and 25 seconds

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has refused to say when the new Labour government will address the care charging crisis that is leading disabled people to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale.

Despite being asked several times by Disability News Service (DNS) when the government would act to scrap care charges for disabled people, he gave no timeframe for when or if that might happen.

Instead, he referred twice to the “£22 billion black hole in the public finances” and said it would “take time to deal with the mess we have inherited from the Conservatives”.

Speaking after a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Streeting said: “Give us time, we’re two months in… I recognise the challenge on charging, but it does come down to money, too.”

But despite repeated questions from DNS over more than four minutes, as he and his aides walked along Royal Albert Dock to his next meeting, he failed to say when a Labour government might act on care charges.

Asked about the tens of thousands of disabled people falling into debt every year because of care charges, he said: “I absolutely recognise the challenge, but it is going to take time to deal with the mess we have inherited from the Conservatives; part of that has got to be rebuilding our economy so we can invest in our public services, and charging reform itself.”

The interview started just yards from where Streeting promised DNS two years ago – when asked what a Labour government would promise on care charges during its first term in government – that Labour was “working on it”.

But Streeting was unable on Sunday to point to any progress since he made that pledge two years ago.

He said: “We recognise the challenge and we’re determined to meet the needs of both disabled people and older people in social care.

“I wish I could promise an overnight fix, I wish this was an issue I could fix in the first eight weeks of a Labour government, but it is going to take time, and I am asking people to bear with us.”

His comments came two months after Disability Law Service (DLS) published research which found that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale because of “unjust” social care charging policies.

DLS suggested that the proportion of disabled adults being charged for their non-residential care was increasing year by year and that local authorities were incurring “significant” and increasing costs of collecting these charges, with most of those charged paying “extortionate amounts” to local authorities.

Research by disabled campaigners showed in 2022 that tens of thousands of disabled people across the country every year were having debt collection action taken against them by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.

Streeting had earlier told the Future Social Care Coalition fringe event that the government would need to recognise “as we think about the NHS crisis that so many of the challenges and pressures driving that NHS crisis are because of the crisis in social care.

“There is no fixing the crisis in the NHS unless we address the crisis in social care.”

But he said social care was important “in and of itself, not just as a means of NHS improvement, it’s important today when there is so much unmet need”.

He said: “We owe it to disabled people to make sure that you get the care and the support you need to enable you to fully participate in every aspect of life, and to feel the same sense of security and the same opportunities and quality of life as everyone else.”

And he stressed that when he talked about social care he was thinking about older people and disabled people.

He told the meeting that both reform and investment would be needed to “deliver results”.

Streeting said that Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP had all been in government over the last 20 years and none of them had delivered the long-term “change” and “solutions” that the country was “desperately crying out for”.

He said: “There is a quiet determination at the centre of our team in the Department of Health and Social Care – and more broadly the government – to make sure that we get this right… for the benefit of people who need care, their families and the care workforce.

“I actually feel really optimistic and hopeful that this will be the parliament that really grips social care, that deals with the crisis confronting us now and also signs up to the longer-term reform agenda we need.”

He said the “low hanging-fruit” was building a national standards framework and “holding care providers to account”, stabilising the workforce, “sorting out the Care Quality Commission”, and setting out a 10-year plan for social care.

The care minister, Stephen Kinnock, had earlier said that the government was “drawing a line under the kicking the can down the road” plan of the previous government.

He said the government was working on a fair pay agreement for care workers and would be “setting the ball rolling on that” within weeks.

He said the government knew that the system needed “huge reform and improvement” but that the changes needed to be “sustainable”, and he pledged that the government would be “listening to people with lived experience” and care workers and providers.

He said: “I share your frustration that we can’t move more quickly but I guarantee that we are absolutely putting this at the heart of the government’s priorities going into the coming weeks, months and years.”

Picture: Wes Streeting at the conference in 2022

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