Richard Fletcher

I wanted to explain to you directly my announcement on creating a National Care Service and the triple lock. Fundamental change is needed to protect the NHS and give older people the support they need. At Labour conference, I announced a plan to create a National Care Service in the next parliament. To fund it, I am proposing an adjustment to the triple lock on the state pension. This will form the basis of a new settlement for older people in our country. I want to explain why this is necessary and what it would mean for pensioners. Everyone knows that our social care system is broken. And yet, for decades, politicians have failed to fix it. Shamefully, millions of older people have unmet care needs. Far too many see everything they have worked for – their home, pension and savings – wiped out by care bills. The personal cost can be devastating, but we should not make the mistake of thinking the price is paid only by older people and their families. I am convinced that if we carry on as we are, our broken social care system will eventually break our NHS too. Every day, older people who should be receiving support at home or in care settings are unnecessarily admitted to A&E. Meanwhile, hospital beds are occupied by people who are fit to leave but have nowhere to go because the care they need is not in place. Go to any hospital and you will see the effect. Corridor care is no longer simply the result of winter pressures. It is a commonplace indignity suffered by thousands of patients every day. It is time for fundamental change. The best chance we have of saving our NHS is to build a high-quality care service. The National Care Service I am proposing will be based on NHS principles: everyone contributes and everyone is covered. It will give people peace of mind about their care needs and protect what they have built up over their lifetime. It will provide free personal care – support with the most basic human needs: eating, dressing and bathing. And it will be integrated with the rest of the system, preventative in nature, and deliver care at home wherever possible, exactly where older people want and should be. A National Care Service, I believe, would become as significant as the creation of the NHS itself. But we need to be honest about the changes that are needed to pay for it. And I do not believe it makes sense to preserve the current triple lock while so many pensioners face the risk of catastrophic care costs. We can give pensioners greater financial security. I am proposing to adjust the triple lock. This is not an easy decision, but I believe it is the right one. We pledged in our manifesto that we would keep the triple lock throughout this parliament, and I will keep that promise. This means the state pension is set to rise by more than £2,000 a year, reaching around 30 per cent of average earnings by the end of the decade – its highest ever level. From April 2030, under our adjusted triple lock, we will guarantee that the state pension rises every year by either inflation or 2.5 per cent, whichever is higher. It will also increase by more than this when necessary to ensure that it holds its value relative to average earnings. This means that if inflation spikes, pensioners will be protected. If wages rise, pensioners will share in that rising prosperity, with the state pension tracking earnings over time. Nobody’s pension will ever go down. And the state pension will be put on a sustainable footing for decades to come. I want to be upfront about what I am proposing because this adjustment will bring change. The state pension will not increase as quickly as it otherwise would if we kept the triple lock in its current form. However, the adjustment will enable us to fix social care for everyone by building a National Care Service that provides older people with free personal care at the point of need. I believe this is a better deal for pensioners. I do not expect people to support this plan without seeing the full detail. We will start laying the ground now for the National Care Service and introduce it as soon as possible in the next parliament. Louise Casey’s review will advise us on exactly how and we will build the maximum consensus around her recommendations. It will be fully funded – and not through borrowing. I appeal to everyone to engage in this debate responsibly and urge politicians to continue the cross-party talks that began over the summer. We need less point scoring and more problem solving. The situation is too serious for us to play politics. Care workers struggling on low pay, families stretched to breaking point, older people fearful of losing everything they have worked for. We need to give them reason to hope again. I have wanted to fix social care for a long time. As health secretary in 2009, I tried to find a cross-party solution. Since then, I have watched the challenges grow more acute and the consequences become more severe. It is a profound failure of politics that we have known about this problem for so long and yet failed to act. I would never forgive myself if I did not try now. This is the settlement I am offering to pensioners: a state pension that rises every year, no care charges and a high-quality National Care Service to give peace of mind in later life. I do not pretend this will be easy. But in the end, politics is about finding a way. I gave my word that I would do everything in my power to build a care system worthy of the people who provide it and all those who depend on it. This is how we can achieve it.