<\/p>\n
Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to a resident as he visits a care home in London, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Pool AP via <\/p>\n
Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham talks to a resident during a visit to a care home in London, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Pool AP via <\/p>\n
Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to a resident as he visits a care home in London, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Pool AP via <\/p>\n
Baroness Louise Casey speaks during a visit of a care home in London, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Pool AP via <\/p>\n
Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to residents, care workers, volunteers and social care stakeholders during a care home visit in London, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Kirsty Wigglesworth\/Pool AP via <\/p>\n
LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged Wednesday that he will succeed where decades of predecessors have failed and fix a \u201cbroken\u201d social care system built on an overstretched public sector and profit-making private firms.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Burnham, 56, said it was a \u201cmajor dereliction of duty\u201d that his generation of politicians had failed to provide decent care in a way that is affordable for both individuals and the state.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think social care in England is as unfair as American healthcare,\u201d Burnham said. \u201cThe vulnerable pay with everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Labour Party leader said he would try to work with other political parties to create a \u201cnational care service\u201d to sit alongside the taxpayer-funded National Health Service established after World War II to give free healthcare to all.<\/p>\n
Burnham, who became prime minister last week, says it\u2019s his priority to tackle the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability. It\u2019s a pressing issue in a country with an aging population and a frayed public health system, and one that has haunted previous Labour and Conservative governments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve probably got a feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu,\u201d Burnham told the audience in a speech at a London care home. \u201cDon\u2019t have that. This time we\u2019re going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s a major dereliction of public duty that Parliament has not faced up to this, of all challenges,\u201d Burnham added, claiming that \u201cpoliticians have put point-scoring before fixing this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham included himself among the failures, having proposed social care reform in 2009 when he was health secretary under former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown.<\/p>\n
Now he has returned to government after a decade away as mayor of Greater Manchester. And, with his father living with Alzheimer\u2019s, Burnham said the issue is personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m making this a test of myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI would never forgive myself if I left without having tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Burnham said Louise Casey, a social welfare expert who has led public numerous reviews and inquiries, would helm a \u201cBig Conversation\u201d to hear from the public on care.<\/p>\n
Casey said it would strive to be a \u201cgame changer that tries to renegotiate the social contract with the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prime minister also invited opposition leaders to a meeting about the issue, saying change will come only if rival politicians find common ground.<\/p>\n
The main opposition Conservative Party said its health spokesperson would attend the talks, and centrist Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said he would go. Anti-immigration party Reform UK, which leads many opinion polls but has just seven seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, said it was not invited.<\/p>\n
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Burnham said he was prepared to risk unpopularity to make changes, which could mean tax increases.<\/p>\n
He said he would work to increase pay, training and status for care workers who do vital work for \u201cpoverty pay.\u201d The government also will look at how much people must pay before they can receive state-funded care, and at the role of private companies who own the bulk of care homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to a resident as he visits a care home in London, Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73961],"tags":[28914,77968,18641,42107,2706,77969,572,573,569,3215,1436],"class_list":["post-170439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-andy-burnham","tag-andy-burnham","tag-andy-burnham-uk-social-care","tag-ed-davey","tag-gord-brown","tag-london","tag-louise-casey","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117003053067218158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}