Liberal Democrats only party to champion social care

The two major political parties revealed the low priority they
would be giving to social care in the election campaign at a
three-way debate at the King’s Fund today, writes
Mithran Samuel from the debate.

Only the Liberal Democrats included social care among their
priorities for the Department of Health, with spokesperson Paul
Burstow restating their commitment to free personal care.

With each party spokesperson given a few minutes to outline
their headline policies for health and social care, Labour’s
John Hutton focused almost exclusively on the NHS.

Conservative health spokesperson Andrew Lansley also failed to
include any specific social care policies in his speech, though he
did call for greater choice over NHS services for people with
mental health problems and an extension of direct payments to
healthcare.