Give us your plan to end social care crisis, Labour tells Boris

LABOUR last night demanded Boris Johnson finally put forward a plan to tackle the social care crisis.

Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said the Prime Minister had failed to come up with one despite promising in July last year that he would solve the problem ‘once and for all’.

Mrs Rayner, who was a care worker before going into politics, also said it was ‘unconscionable’ that the average pay for a care worker was just £8.10 an hour.

She added: ‘The Prime Minister must publish his plan to fix the crisis in social care without any more delays, and that plan must guarantee all care workers are paid at least the real living wage.

‘He and his ministers have fallen over themselves to clap for our carers and offer them warm words, but applause and empty gestures don’t pay the rent or put the food on the table. We can’t clap our key workers and then abandon them. After all their sacrifice and bravery, the very least that our care workers deserve is a pay rise.’

Mrs Rayner, who represented fellow care workers as a union official, said many did not have the right to statusteps

‘Failure and incompetence’

sick pay: ‘ They are left in an appalling position, forced to choose between going to work and putting vulnerable people at risk or doing the right thing, isolating at home and not being able to pay the bills.’

Outside No 10 last July, Mr Johnson said: ‘I am announcing now – on the of Downing Street – that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.’

But earlier this week health minister Lord Bethell said: ‘I cannot commit to a social care plan before the end of the year … I suspect it will take longer than the next few months.’

Mrs Rayner also accused Mr Johnson of abandoning care home residents to their fate. She said: ‘It is his failure and incompetence that has resulted in 15,000 deaths in our care homes due to coronavirus. He should concentrate on fixing the crisis in social care that has become even more urgent because of this pandemic.’

Under England’s broken care system, people have to pay the full cost of their care down to their last £23,250.