Comment: Social care can’t wait another year

Even though Parliament is in recess, announcements from the Burnham administration keep coming thick and fast, and two this week caught my eye.

I know I sound like a broken record on this, whether in Parliament, on the media, or in policy discussions, but I believe fixing social care will be the defining reset for any government brave enough to tackle it. I make no apology for that. So, I welcome Andy Burnham's early commitment to grip this issue and work cross-party, including reports he will instruct Louise Casey to speed up the independent review into social care: it’s currently not due to report until 2028, and that timetable was always too slow.

Even though Parliament is in recess, announcements from the Burnham administration keep coming thick and fast.

The numbers explain why urgency matters. Royal College of Physicians figures showed that in February 2025 alone, more than 13,000 hospital beds every single day were occupied by people medically fit to be discharged but with nowhere to go, because no social care package was available. We will never have a functioning front door to the NHS until we fix the back door, and with social care sitting on the balance sheets of local authorities running deficits year after year, that conflict must be addressed head on.

It's a tension I recognise close to home too. A recent assessment of West Sussex County Council's adult social care found genuinely positive, person-centred support once people were in the system, but also long waits for assessments and reviews, gaps in respite for unpaid carers, and a significant backlog for Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards applications. The council has been working hard to improve things, but it's another reminder that good intentions from committed staff can only go so far without the funding and national reform to match.

That's why family carers matter so much to this debate. These are people who support loved ones at home, often giving up work entirely, saving the state enormous sums while putting themselves last, and yet the West Sussex report found some carers weren't even offered an assessment of their own needs. The Liberal Democrats have fought hard to expose the carer's allowance repayment scandal and secure a freeze on repayments for vulnerable carers, but government could do so much more to value what these families sacrifice.

Elsewhere, Burnham is reportedly preparing to cut business rates for pubs and hospitality businesses by 20%, funded by higher rates on out-of-town warehouses. This is a welcome first step that will begin to level the playing field for many of our struggling local businesses. I've spoken to many business owners who have raised these concerns directly, worried that spiralling costs will force them to close.

But it still falls short of Labour's promise to fundamentally overhaul the broken business rates system, which will continue to penalise high street businesses. High street businesses up and down the country will also continue to be hit by the jobs tax, leaving thousands of hospitality businesses in serious trouble and depriving young people of those valuable first job opportunities. The new Prime Minister has made protecting these businesses and helping young people find work a key priority, but far more will need to be done to make that a reality.