Fury as Keir Starmer’s pledge to resolve social care disaster backfires | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Campaigners are demanding that Sir Keir Starmer sack the pinnacle of a authorities inquiry tasked with ending the social care disaster. The Commission on Social Care, chaired by Baroness Louise Casey, has barely made any progress greater than a yr after it was created.

Members of campaigning group Silver Voices have voted to name for the fee to be axed. Director Dennis Reed claimed the physique was getting used to delay long-awaited reforms that would show politically troublesome for the Government. Last yr, 900,000 individuals final yr had requests for social care turned down and older persons are being compelled into promoting their houses to pay for the astronomical prices of residential care.

More individuals might be compelled to raid their life financial savings after the Department of Health and Social Care introduced this week that it was freezing the extent of property persons are allowed to personal earlier than they cease receiving care at no cost.

The decrease “capital limit”, at which individuals make a means-tested contribution to social care, will stay at £14,250. The larger restrict, when persons are compelled to pay for all their care themselves, might be £23,250.

Freezing the sum, relatively than rising it according to inflation, means it’s lower in actual phrases and ensures rising numbers of older individuals should pay.

The thresholds embrace the worth of the particular person’s residence if they’re in a care residence completely, and their property just isn’t occupied by their associate, a relative over 60 or a baby. In this case, they could be compelled to promote their residence to satisfy the prices of care.

The final Conservative authorities introduced plans to extend the upper threshold to as a lot as £100,000, and to introduce a lifetime cap of £86,000 on the quantity anybody might be required to spend on their very own social care.

However, Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves scrapped these plans in July 2024, saying Tories had not defined how they’d pay for the adjustments.

Instead, Health Secretary Wes Streeting introduced in January 2025 that Baroness Casey would lead a fee reporting on to Sir Keir “to make clear recommendations for how to rebuild the adult social care system to meet the current and future needs of the population”.

Mr Reed mentioned his requests to satisfy Baroness Casey, or to acquire particulars of its work, had been refused. The fee has a web site, however this solely information three minor engagements since final April. The most up-to-date information is of a gathering in Newcastle in October 2025.

He mentioned: “We’ve had enough of the procrastination on social care. Baroness Casey needs to have her contract terminated, the Civil Service team supporting her needs to be disbanded, and Wes Streeting needs to start caring about the other half of his health and social care portfolio.”

Baroness Casey has been tipped as a possible substitute for Sir Keir’s former chief of employees Morgan McSweeney, who has stop No 10.

But Mr Reed mentioned: “Casey may be in the running for the top job supporting Keir Starmer, but millions of older people have been disillusioned by her seeming lack of regard for the plight faced by vulnerable people who can’t get the social care support they need.

“If Starmer wants someone who will do his bidding without question and delay awkward political questions until the next Parliament, she may be a perfect fit.”

A spokesperson for the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care mentioned: “The Independent Commission into Adult Social Care remains on track to report in two phases, with the first due in 2026, in line with its terms of reference.

“Since its launch in April, Baroness Casey and her group have engaged with greater than 400 individuals with lived expertise of receiving or delivering care, held cross‑social gathering talks, established an internet proof portal, and brought proof from frontline staff, care suppliers, councils, the NHS and charities.

“Later this year, the commission will launch a national conversation to build public consensus on what adult social care should deliver for citizens.”

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Age UK mentioned it continued to again the fee however charity director Caroline Abrahams added: “We will keep on pressing for ministers to speed up the leisurely timetable they originally set for the Casey Commission: older people have already waited far too long for an effective social care system.”

Lisa Morgan, head of the nursing care charge restoration group at High James Solicitors, mentioned: “The decision to keep the upper capital limit frozen at £23,250 means more and more people are being forced to pay for their own care, even when they would not consider themselves wealthy.

If that figure had risen with inflation since 2010, it would now be around £38,595 in today’s money. Instead, it has stood still for more than fifteen years while the cost of living has risen sharply. As savings grow in nominal terms but the threshold does not, more people are pushed over the line and into self-funding.

In practical terms, someone with relatively modest savings – often built up over a lifetime or realised through selling a family home – can quickly find themselves expected to cover the full cost of care, which can run into thousands of pounds each month.

The Dilnot Commission recognised this problem and recommended increasing the upper threshold to £100,000. That reform was legislated for and was due to come into force in October 2023, later delayed to October 2025, before being abandoned by the Government in 2024.

Instead of strengthening protection for families facing potentially catastrophic care costs, the continued freeze has quietly tightened the system. The longer it remains unchanged, the more ordinary people are drawn into privately paying for care simply because the rules have not kept pace with economic reality.”