Stephen Kinnock appointed minister for social care

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The Labour MP for Aberafan Maesteg in Wales becomes minister of state for care in the Department of Health and Social Care.

His appointment comes despite him never having held the portfolio as a shadow minister, in which capacity he had oversight over the Asia and Pacific region, the armed forces and – since 2022 – immigration.

However, he does have experience of the impact of dementia on families, having lost his mother, the former minister, peer and MEP Glennys Kinnock, to Alzheimer’s Disease in 2023.

What is in Kinnock’s in-tray?

Two big items in Kinnock’s in-tray are planned reforms to the adult social care charging system and Labour’s own plans to improve the pay, terms and conditions of the sector’s workforce.

In November 2022, the then Conservative government postponed planned charging reforms, including introducing an £86,000 cap on people’s personal care costs, until October 2025. In doing so, it diverted most of the £3.6bn it had allocated to implementing the reforms into shoring up day-to-day adult social care services.

However, it did not appear to have made preparations for implementation before it left office, while think-tank Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has pointed out that no funding has been allocated to the reforms.

Question marks over changes

During the election campaign, Labour confirmed it would go ahead with the reforms in October 2025, but has not allocated any funding to them in the context of the party imposing tight limits on public spending.

Kinnock and his boss, health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, will need to determine how the policy can be funded and whether the October 2025 implementation date is realistic.

Councils would need to overhaul their case management systems and their approaches to assessment and support planning, including through recruiting more staff, in order to deliver on the changes.

Fair pay agreement

In its manifesto, Labour promised to negotiate a fair pay agreement for adult social care in order to boost the workforce’s pay, terms and conditions.

However, as with the charging reforms, it did not allocate any resource to this.

The IFS has calculated that, if this involved setting a sector minimum wage that was £1 an hour above the national living wage (NLW), it could cost the public sector about £200m-£360m a year; a £2 an hour boost could cost £750m-£1.2bn a year.

At the same time, Skills for Care will shortly publish its workforce strategy for adult social care, which is designed to influence the government’s own approach to staffing in the sector.

Ideas under consideration for the strategy include tying increased qualifications for staff to higher pay and providing registered managers with a supported year of development after taking up their posts.