Reeves is warned of 8.6bn annual bill to fix social care

Labour has been warned £1.1bn savings from the cancellation of a planned cap on social care costs is “small change” compared to an estimated £8.6bn needed to fix the crumbling sector.

- MILLIE COOKE

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in July she was ditching the cap, which would have resulted in local authorities paying for individuals’ care needs above £86,000, to help plug a £22bn black hole in the country’s finances. Eight times the amount the controversial move saved would be needed to address years of problems in the struggling sector, buckling under the evergrowing demands of an ageing population.

Age UK, Carers Trust and Sense have now said that a £7bn figure presented to the government by the Health and Social Care Select Committee in 2020 is needed each year to fix the sector, now amounting to £8.6bn when adjusted for inflation. The huge sum would cover improvements in pay for existing social care workers, the recruitment of extra workers, as well as the introduction of a lifetime cap on care costs – the very proposal recently scrapped by Ms Reeves.

Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, told The Independent social care needs this level of extra funding “just to stand still”.

“We need at least £7bn, but it has actually got to be more – the £1bn received through scrapping the social care cap was small change compared to that,” he added.

While Mr Padgham acknowledged the multibillion-pound funding recommendation is a huge sum, he called for funding to be diverted from the NHS – warning Labour will be unable to remedy the problems with the health service without “plugging gaps in the care sector first”.