Introduction

The demand for free personal care, modelled on the Scottish policy, has become popular further south in recent years. As noted in Chapter 1, many organisations want a national social care service, to be free at the point of use, and funded nationally like the NHS, rather than locally. People are asking, if Scotland can make care free, why not England? It would cost much more than the very limited care reforms once planned for autumn 2025, then abandoned in the tight fiscal regime of July 2024. But as this chapter will show, the amounts of money required to pay care workers adequately and meet unmet needs are substantially larger than the cost of abolishing user charges. Care reform requires bold steps to raise more public funds. The clamour of so many organisations for free social care is a popular and worthy long-term objective which has also been adopted by the Welsh government for the long term (Welsh Government, 2023). However, one needs to be realistic about what can be achieved quickly, and to consider how to prioritise different care reforms.

Any increase in care subsidies cannot depend on the regressive, geographically uneven and inadequate yields of council tax. The most urgent requirement, even before reducing charges, is a major injection of funds from national sources to avoid further cuts.