Ministers to launch historic commission to reform ‘failing’ system amid warnings the NHS risks being overwhelmed

Overnight our health editor Andrew Gregory set out his analysis of the Labour announcement on adult social care, describing it as the “biggest challenge yet for Louise Casey”. He writes:

The sector has been in crisis for decades. While the NHS, which has a host of serious problems of its own, typically grabs the headlines and taxpayers’ cash, adult social care is always the neglected relative.

A devastating analysis sent to ministers by leading voices in the sector last year warned that high employment costs, low fee rates and councils struggling to balance their books were all threatening its overall sustainability.

We will have cross party talks next month. And I’m really encouraged by the fact that since the election, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Reform of all said that they want to work cross-party on this.

We will work on the on the setup of the commission. We will work throughout the commission, and I hope that when the commission reports ahead of the next general election, we can all agree on the direction on social care for the long term.

I believe even more strongly today that we need to build a genuine cross-party consensus in the way that the Labour government established after 1948 about the NHS. A national consensus around what a national care service ought to be, and how it is organised.

One of the great legacies of that 1945 Labour government is that although the Tories voted against the creation of the NHS 22 times, broadly speaking, and we’ve had our ups and downs and our differences and certainly different performances under different governments, but broadly speaking, that NHS has run according to the same tram lines that were agreed in 1948 as a public service free at the point of use.