As I hoped it wouldn't, politics has entered the future of adult social care. I'm not talking politics in terms of compromise, reasoned debate and the idea that someone's values and ideology can inform a principled policy position. I'm talking politics in terms of he-said, she-said.
And that's what we got today: first, the Conservatives claimed 2 million people would be worse off as a result of the government's social care plans. In this case, they are making the right charge at the wrong issue: the government has indeed said that Attendance Allowance (AA) (and perhaps Disability Living Allowance for those over 65) will be considered as part of the overall suite of funding for the proposed National Care Service. But AA won't be used to fund the measures announced in the Queen's Speech (see here). The £670m needed for that proposal will come from the Department of Health (£420m) and efficiency savings in local government.
Aside from this, the ruckus about DLA and AA has been rumbling on since the government's Green Paper on the future of adult social care was published in July. Benefits and Work ran a significant campaign about it and there was an associated petition on the Number 10 website. So for the Tories to only highlight the issue and campaign on it today (after the government's consultation has finished) is politics.
Of course, Labour responded by saying the Tories were 'scaremongering' and that their plan wouldn't affect AA / DLA. And they're right: the plan announced in the Queen's Speech won't. But the Green Paper proposals will.
What neither party is willing to admit or engage in properly is the idea, painfully apparent to anyone with direct personal experience of adult social care, that such care needs to be paid for, with the right balance of government and individual funding, and that such care needs to be personalised and of excellent quality.
Until they put aside the ridiculous posturing politics of he-said, she-said, with the associated poor quality of coverage, the issue of adult social care won't receive the proper attention it requires.
Update:: Of course, the Lib Dems have now entered the fray, with Norman Lamb calling the free care plan the "the last nail in the coffin of the social care green paper". Like the Tories, the Lib Dems are mixing up Labour's plans for free care for a number of people at home with the plans for an entire National Care Service for everyone. That they then go on to say they advocate the partnership-type approach put forward by the King's Fund, which is exactly the approach put forward in 3 slightly different ways in the Green Paper, it makes you wonder if anyone has read the Green Paper, apart from the civil servants who wrote it.
