Working-age adults such as my son, who is autistic, face a fragmented and unreliable system, yet ministers talk only of a national care service for older people
Seemingly brilliant conference speeches are often followed by a hangover, and so it has arguably proved with Andy Burnham’s. It was, it has to be said, something of a triumph, but there is now a familiar sense of nagging angst over how his big idea of a national care service is actually going to work. But equally, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to be more generous and patient. The policy issues are vast. The new PM’s commitment to serious change is clear. And having been urgently needed for years, the basics of what he wants – personal, home-based care delivered free at the proverbial point of need – will be on their way if Labour wins the next election.
Here, though, is a question that is much less finely balanced. Neither Burnham’s speech nor the much shorter address given by Yvette Cooper, the new health and social care secretary, contained a single mention of what roughly half of England’s social care budgets are spent on: provision for working-age disabled adults. Why not? I get the politics: fixating on older people’s care and the pensions triple lock makes everything clear and relatable. But England’s fragmented, unreliable system for younger disabled adults is in need of the same radical level of reform, and it’s the source of just as much fear and worry for the people who either depend on it, or eventually will do.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
