Does Gordon Brown really care about our elderly?
Today’s Queen’s Speech is widely expected to bring forward a Personal Care at Home Bill, designed to pay for personal care for many pensioners. Reports on its contents suggest that there will be many who fall through this ’safety net’, not least those whose needs are so great that they have to move into residential care. But what is most striking are the remarks of Gordon Brown in a statement given to the Daily Mail. These are some of his words:
[...] my determination to make care for the elderly a priority. So today we will be begin to set out our bold plans for reform – with a National Care Service as its centre-piece – because our current system is simply not fit for purpose
It is not right that people already struggling with the loss of independence – who have worked hard all their lives and saved for their retirement – are being forced to run down their savings or sell their homes to fund their care. How must that feel? I can only imagine. And how must it feel for people seeing their parents and grandparents suffering from conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia watch as their dignity fades – only to have the heartbreak made worse by the costs of getting support? Now [the wartime] generation is owed a further debt of dignity: to receive care and to stay in their homes as long as possible. And we are able to act now. In today’s Queen’s Speech we will set out immediate plans to protect those with the greatest needs from charges and top-up fees for care in their own homes – for good.
This is just a first step. In the New Year we will publish detailed plans for a new National Care Service and I am clear that this will be the first domestic priority of a new Labour Government in the next Parliament. By creating the right support and incentives to keep people in their own homes, we can begin to cut the costs of care for individuals and for the state.And most importantly we will begin to fulfil our commitment to ensure that everyone has dignity and security in their old age.
So lots of warm words: dignity, commitment, security, reform. Words designed to generate support at the ballot box, but not to really achieve anything. How do I know? Because if Gordon Brown really felt this way, he would have done something about it over the last 12 years. You would think that think that this was Labour’s first Queen’s Speech for many years, not their 13th (hmm) in a row! Shouldn’t he have ensured that a ‘commitment to ensure that everyone has dignity and security in their old age’ was fulfilled in the first year of New Labour’s government, not in the dying days of his limping premiership? And if the current care system is ‘not fit for purpose’ shouldn’t action have been taken to protect elderly people much sooner? Or has Brown only just noticed what many have been saying for two decades? If only a fraction of the money spent so that Blair could be Bush’s Middle East poodle had been spent on care for the elderly and disabled, we could have repaid that ‘debt of dignity’ with interest years ago.
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- Does the Manchester Labour Party believe Gordon Brown is fit to be in Parliament?
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- A Major chance for Gordon?
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