Prime minister Andy Burnham has reiterated the importance of fixing the UK’s social care system and its impact on the recovery of the NHS.
Burnham (pictured) has warned that failing to fix the “broken social care” system will lead to the collapse of the NHS as it costs the health service “billions of pounds a year”.
He told the BBC that it would not be possible to get a whole new system in before the next election because that takes time.
However, he added “there are major changes you could make before the next election”.
Outlining the severity of the situation, Burnham said: “This costs the NHS billions of pounds and we will never get the NHS back to good waiting time standards until we fix social care.”
He added: “If we don’t do it the NHS will collapse under the weight of trying to care for people who’ve really not needed to end up in the NHS.”
The NHS waiting list has proved increasingly difficult to cut down despite productivity improvements, having ticked up again to 7.3 million according to the last figures published earlier this month.
There have been several attempts to reform the funding and model of social care services over the last two decades but none have made significant progress as governments have changed and political agendas have taken over.
Burnham told the BBC this was about political will and he was not going to change his political philosophy of the last two decades on issues such as this now he was leading the country.
“Whatever political capital I have I will put into fixing broken social care and I would not want to leave office without having brought in substantial change, the new system of care,” he said.
