'IT'S A COP-OUT" ON SOCIAL CARE REFORMS

LABOUR'S social care reforms will take years and are a "cop-out", campaigners warned.

- Katie Harris and Hanna Geissler

An independent commission is not due to make recommendations until 2028 - and activist Dennis Reed claimed that amounted to a "recipe for delay".

He added: "It's a cop-out really. It's a way to sort of formalise the fact that Labour don't want to do anything during this Parliament to resolve the social care crisis."

Mr Reed, director of over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, claimed that the timeline would mean legislation to reform adult social care is unlikely to pass before the next general election - and added there is a risk that "yet again social care will have fallen by the wayside".

He went on: "I don't think an independent commission is necessary at all because we've had two dozen such attempts at resolving the crisis over the last 20 years or so. This is a time for political decisions.

"We've got all the information from all those previous commissions, and what the Government needs to do is to say, 'This is our National Care Service plan, this is what we intend the service to do, these are the principles that we'd like to see'.

"The crisis is here and now. There are huge waiting lists for social care. The NHS hospital service is blocked up by patients not being able to be discharged to their own homes because there isn't social care available.

"Local authorities are almost, in many cases, going bankrupt because they haven't got enough funding for adult social care.

"Yet apparently we've got all the time in the world to go through all the same options again that have been discussed over the last 20 years or so."

The commission - led by Baroness Casey of Blackstock is expected to begin in April and to publish a first report with initial recommendations in mid-2026.

Long-term recommendations to transform social care are then due by 2028.