Badenoch tells Burnham: no tax rises for social care
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- Kemi Badenoch wrote to Prime Minister Andy Burnham demanding he rule out tax rises or increased borrowing to fund social care reform, offering cooperation only if he honours Conservative 'two core principles.'
- Badenoch's two conditions: reform must be fair to those who have 'made provisions and saved up over the course of their lives,' and funding must come from reducing current spending rather than new taxes or borrowing.
- Badenoch cited businesses closing or relocating, youth unemployment higher than the eurozone, and cost-of-living hardship as evidence that Britain 'cannot afford further tax increases to pay for social care.'
- Burnham is expected to make a speech on adult social care this week, with a No 10 source telling the BBC it is part of his plan to 'run towards problems that have been neglected.'
- Burnham first proposed a universal social care system in England in 2009 as health secretary under Gordon Brown, and has vowed to spend political capital on the issue as prime minister.
- Keir Starmer's Labour government scrapped plans for an £86,000 cap on lifetime personal care spending in England in July 2024, drawing criticism from reform advocates.
- Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called for cross-party consensus, and Burnham responded on X: 'It most certainly is, Ed. Let's work together to find some common ground.'
Why it matters: Badenoch's conditional offer forces Burnham to find savings from existing budgets before raising revenue — a politically difficult ask given a decade of failed social care pledges, from Boris Johnson's 2019 promise to 'fix the crisis once and for all' to Starmer's scrapped £86,000 cap. Whether Burnham can build a cross-party coalition will determine whether this reform attempt gains traction or joins the long list of stalled predecessors.
