Good morning. Andy Burnham will soon be adding his name to the list of prime ministers who have tried to answer one of the trickiest questions in British politics: how should we pay for social care? In his first sit-down interview as PM, he warned that the NHS would “collapse” without social care reform, and said he wouldn’t want to leave office without significantly changing the system.
Those of you who remember Burnham as a fresh-faced health secretary may recall he co-authored a paper setting out plans for a National Care Service in 2010. It was one of the few instances where politicians came close to a solution, but after Labour was accused of trying to introduce a “death tax”, the paper joined a list of at least 22 major reviews, commissions and reports published since 1997 that have tried – and failed – to fix the problem.
