MPs Urge Government To Act Faster On Cross-Party Social Care Talks

It is a problem every party acknowledges needs to be fixed, with broad agreement on the shape of the solution – and yet for at least three decades finding sustainable funding for social care has eluded successive governments.

Veterans of one of Whitehall’s most notorious ‘wicked problems’ were not surprised, therefore, at the less than auspicious beginning of the latest effort. Just the night before the start of new cross-party talks late last month, the government postponed the event.

The day before, a crowd of care workers, care home providers and supporters had marched through Westminster, once again warning the sector is “close to collapse”.

There is almost certainly already consensus

But the participants of the talks – care minister Stephen Kinnock, shadow health secretary Edward Argar, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, the Liberal Democrats’ Layla Moran, the Green Party’s Ellie Chowns, and Baroness Casey (who is leading the independent commission on adult social care reform) – have yet to meet. Insiders say there was a legitimate reason for the delay, but it adds to the sense of frustration.

“It is a shame that this was announced at the beginning of January and the first round of discussion framing it would begin in February,” Argar tells The House. “It was only in mid to late February that an invitation was sent out – in the middle of recess.”

A senior government aide confirmed that no agenda had been sent to parties ahead of the first planned meeting. At the time of writing, no date has been set for the new round of talks. 

“We’ve had almost no info,” says Moran, who had been ready to miss a meeting of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, which she chairs, in order to attend the original cross-party gathering.

In January, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that Casey would lead a commission into building a National Care Service, with cross-party talks feeding in. It is hoped that both working-age disabled adults and the elderly, who present similar costs of care to councils, would be supported by this service. However, the deadline for the commission’s final recommendations is 2028 – potentially less than a year from an election.

While there is significant cynicism about the viability of cross-party talks, some MPs insist that, this time, politics won’t win out – unlike when Labour’s 2010 proposals were dubbed by the Tories the “death tax” and when Theresa May’s 2017 solution was dubbed by Labour the “dementia tax”.

Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East, Joe Robertson, whose local authority spends more per capita on social care than any other in England, says today’s MPs are more aligned on solutions to the sector’s issues.

“The social care reforms that are needed are not a great mystery,” he says. “There is almost certainly already consensus, so I don’t expect the talks need to be particularly prolonged or protracted.”

The Greens’ Ellie Chowns agrees. “There’s actually a lot of consensus. We’re really, really committed to working to find an agreement where everyone can agree. That should surely be about setting a cap on older age social care costs.”

She adds that the Green Party will be calling for universal access to social care funding through general taxation, raising the threshold for cash flow assets so people can access social care, and supporting the social care workforce to be seen as equal with NHS workers.

Argar deems it “premature” to reveal the Conservative Party’s demands, but thinks the first session will set the agenda going forwards: “I think it’s important everyone’s able to be around the table, to at least have that initial framing conversation of what the scope looks like and how they are suggesting they want to proceed with the commission.”

Similarly, the Liberal Democrats will not be drawn on their specific asks for cross-party talks. However, the party’s care and carers’ spokesperson Alison Bennett says the priority will be bringing forward the commission’s final reporting date.

“From these talks we, first and foremost, need to see the government shrink the timeline. We have had review after review, with many of the answers to this crisis already well-known,” she says.

Reform UK did not respond when asked what they were seeking from the cross-party talks.

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One consequence of the failure to reform social care is the sector’s acute workforce shortage, which in turn is driving up net migration.

Between 2022 and 2024, 185,000 workers came to the UK to fill care vacancies. The government announced a ban on care workers bringing dependants with them to the UK, and said only Care Quality Commission-registered providers could sponsor health and care worker visas. Applications for the visas initially fell by 62 per cent.

But a hoped-for compensating increase in the number of UK applicants does not appear to be happening. Indeed, according to exclusive data from job board Totaljobs, applications from candidates with UK addresses for social care roles were 83 per cent lower in January this year compared to January 2023.

Skills for Care data shows 83 per cent of the social care workforce was British in 2022, which fell to 79 per cent in 2023 and 73 per cent in 2024. Correspondingly, non-EU citizens made up 10 per cent of the sector in 2022, 15 per cent in 2023, and 20 per cent in 2024.

While the government launched its ‘Make Care Your Career’ recruitment campaign in February to attract more care workers to the sector, ministers are pinning their hopes on new pay bargaining rules, which should drive up wages. However, it is not yet clear who will foot the bill.

I fear we may be talking a second term to see any changes made

Labour is legislating for the new adult social care negotiating body in its long-awaited Employment Rights Bill. This will bring sectoral bargaining into social care, meaning 18,500 disparate employers will be collectively spoken for on pay and conditions.

“If and when this happens, this will make social care wages much more competitive than they are at the moment, and that will make a very significant difference,” says Simon Bottery, senior fellow in social care policy at The King’s Fund.

Work is currently being done within the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to define the scope of the negotiating body.

“If that body can come up with a recommendation on an increase in pay, there is still the issue of who pays for it,” says Bottery.

“The providers will say that they haven’t got capacity to increase pay any more than they already have done, and they have to be fully funded by the government. So, there’ll be a very, very key question about whether government does actually come through with full funding for the cost of implementing a fair pay agreement.”

With the looming National Insurance rises on business coupled with an increase in the minimum wage due to take effect in April, care providers feel embattled.

“The worry is whether we can be sustainable in the long run,” says Lausa Biragi, registered manager of You & I Care. “We can’t increase staff rates; the councils are not offering anything higher. We look at the fact that most care – almost 76 per cent – is government-funded care. If the councils can’t increase the costs, what can we do about it?”

For now, the outlook from the social care front line remains bleak. “Quite a lot of the [home care] providers that councils and NHS bodies are contracting with now are just not doing things properly. You literally cannot [do things properly] on £17 an hour, which is what some of them are paying,” says Jane Townson, chief executive officer of Homecare Association.

“There are unsafe things going on, and when unsafe things go on, it increases the risk of people ending up in hospital.”

The Homecare Association’s research published last summer showed only one per cent of regular homecare contracts with local authorities and health and social care trusts in the UK attained the organisation’s ‘minimum price for homecare’ in their respective nation – amounting to just two contracts.

“MPs [in government] all want a solution,” Townson adds. “They know it’s expensive, and they know that the public isn’t really fully engaged with it as an issue. They perceive it’s politically dangerous for them, because everyone who’s tried has ended up losing an election.”

Opposition parties are now questioning Labour’s willingness to risk another ‘death tax’ fiasco.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage calls the delay to cross-party talks under Labour a great pity, adding: “The social care crisis is a timebomb worthy of cross-party debate.”

Rachael Maskell, Labour (Co-op) MP for York Central, thinks the DHSC has become consumed with the assisted dying bill – to the exclusion of all else.

“The minister is spending all his time on the Terminally Ill Adults Bill,” she says of Kinnock. “There must be a capacity issue within the department.”

Maskell doubts whether opposition parties were to blame for the talks being postponed. With Labour under pressure from all political sides to commit to social care cross-party talks, she says she “would find it incredulous if other parties didn’t want to be first at the table”.

“It sounds like the minister’s portfolio has been sacrificed by the bill,” she says. “We haven’t seen [developments on] dental contracts or community pharmacies either.”

For Robertson, the government can, and should, be juggling health demands alongside social care demands.

“It’s the same sorry story for, particularly, social care – other things get in the way, and very often things that get in the way are NHS announcements or reforms – but there’s no reason why you can’t be doing two at the same time.”

Robertson thinks the DHSC is “a long way from winning the argument” with the Treasury. “Plainly, the Department of Health is losing the argument with the Treasury at the moment,” he says. “They’ve taken a financial decision that doesn’t incentivise keeping people at home, keeping people in care homes rather than hospitals.”

Writing in The Guardian in January, Streeting said “general election campaigns are where plans for social care go to die”. 

While pledging a relatively paltry £600m a year for social care may ease the pressure on the Treasury in the short term, MPs now fear Labour will run out of road to make reforms before the end of this Parliament.

“This just pushes social care reform further into the next general election timetable,” says Maskell. “I fear we may be talking a second term to see any changes made.”

The problems plaguing social care show no signs of disappearing. With cross-party talks and legislative solutions facing delays, Labour seems to be falling behind in realising its vision for social care reform.

A DHSC spokesperson says: “This government inherited significant challenges facing social care. We have taken immediate action including providing a £3.7bn funding boost, 7,800 new adaptations to help disabled people live safely and independently in their own homes, and we are also introducing the first ever fair pay agreement for care professionals.

“Dame Louise Casey is leading an independent commission to develop recommendations for a National Care Service to provide high-quality care for everybody who needs it, and help us deliver our commitment to rebuild the sector so that it is fit for the future.” 

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