Prime Minister Andy Burnham will meet with opposition party leaders on Wednesday to kickstart efforts to reform the UK’s broken and creaking social care system. He has invited Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey to discuss how to enact urgent reform and find common ground across party lines to resolve a decades-old funding crisis.
In an upcoming speech on social care, the Prime Minister is expected to set out his strategy for resolving one of the most intractable issues in British politics. He has promised a focus on problem-solving rather than point-scoring as he speeds up the review of social care in England.
As part of this initiative, he will need to explain how he plans to pay for any changes while sticking to his fiscal rules. This focus on reform follows a previous proposal for a national care service which Burnham introduced while serving as health minister from 2009 to 2010.