Today's announcement of free personal care for those most in need is admirable but ill timed. Gordon Brown must call an election by 10 May 2010, leaving just under six months for the bills to pass through Parliament. Before then MPs will have recess over the Christmas and Easter periods. The Tories have also pledged to oppose the bill. Can anything really be done?
The intention is admirable, to try to fix a clearly broken social care system which is not fit for purpose now or in the future, in the process making many people's lives better. But it's understandable that some will see this as too little too late.
Labour are hoping to set social care as a core battleground for the election, one on which traditionally you might expect them to out perform the Tories. But by leaving it this late in the term to start out on this it will be a difficult sell to the public to see it as a central Labour commitment.
Those in the sector may well be nonplussed as well. Following months of consultation on a proposed radical ground-up revision of how we fund and organise social care we now have what appears to be a sticking plaster or at best a clean start to the jigsaw benefits approach the sector already operates under. With time as limited as it is drawing up and pushing through this bill seem likely to detract from the results of that huge consultation if not completely undermine it.
For all the months of talk, come next May, we may well end-up back where we started.
Labour are hoping to set social care as a core battleground for the election, one on which traditionally you might expect them to out perform the Tories. But by leaving it this late in the term to start out on this it will be a difficult sell to the public to see it as a central Labour commitment.
Those in the sector may well be nonplussed as well. Following months of consultation on a proposed radical ground-up revision of how we fund and organise social care we now have what appears to be a sticking plaster or at best a clean start to the jigsaw benefits approach the sector already operates under. With time as limited as it is drawing up and pushing through this bill seem likely to detract from the results of that huge consultation if not completely undermine it.
For all the months of talk, come next May, we may well end-up back where we started.
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