Jeremy Corbyn: We Need a Budget for the People

In 2017, the Labour Party’s ‘For The Many, Not The Few’ election manifesto pledged to build a National Care Service. Built on the same universal principles of the NHS, we called for social care to be freely available to all those who need it, wherever they need it, whenever they need it. Over the next two years, we developed this policy and centered it once more in the 2019 manifesto, which promised to provide ‘community-based, person-centred support, underpinned by the principles of ethical care and independent living’. Vowing to reverse the damage done by years of Tory cuts, we pledged to provide free personal care for older people, with an ambition to extend this provision to all working-age adults living independently in their own homes, and people with complex conditions like dementia.

At that time, 1.5 million elderly people had been left without the care they needed. Today, that number has exceeded 2 million. The care crisis is continuing to have a profound impact on a depleted, overworked and underpaid workforce, one in five of whom live in poverty Unsurprisingly, the same number are considering leaving or are already actively planning to leave their posts. The most common reasons? Feeling undervalued, overwhelmed and exhausted. Vast numbers of unpaid carers — predominantly women — end up filling the gap, sacrificing their careers and income to provide round-the-clock care. By 2035, 1.6 million unpaid carers will be in poverty, rising to over 2 million by 2050.

I am pleased that Andy Burnham has signalled his intention to build a National Care Service. I was less pleased to hear that it will not be set up until after the next general election, with reports suggesting we may even have to wait until the 2030s. For at least the last five parliaments, there has been a cross-party endeavour to kick the can down the road. The social care crisis has reached epidemic proportions right across the country, and it demands action now.

Crucially, we can fund care for all without sacrificing state pension security. At just over £12,500 a year, the UK state pension is still among the weakest in Europe, which is one of the many reasons why more than 2 million pensioners live in poverty today. They will be the ones who suffer the most from the proposed removal of the triple lock.

There are, of course, many wealthy and asset-rich pensioners, but this is because we live in a deeply unequal society which concentrates wealth in the hands of a few. This isn’t about old versus young. This is about the super-rich versus the rest. That’s why a National Care Service should be funded, primarily, by a range of wealth taxes. A 2% tax on households with more than £100m in wealth would affect fewer than 1,000 of the richest UK households, and raise more than £10 billion a year. Equalising capital gains tax with income tax would raise around £8 billion a year. Raising the bank surcharge to 16% could raise £24 billion over the next four years.

In his conference speech, Burnham committed to break with the ‘flawed thinking of the last 40 years’. He could start with social care itself. Following decades of internal market ideology from both New Labour and the Conservatives, almost all local authority-run care homes had been closed and outsourced to private providers. A National Care Service worthy of its name must reverse the disaster of privatisation, and ensure health and social care is run for public good, not profit.

We can embed a National Care Service into a much wider programme that redistributes wealth and power to lift people of all generations out of poverty. This week’s budget is an opportunity to do just that. Chancellor John Healey can — and should — stand up in parliament and say: ‘Today, we are bringing water, energy, rail and social care into public ownership’ (as opposed to ambiguous references to ‘public control’). ‘Today, we are bringing in rent controls. Today, we are ending cuts to welfare to ensure all those who live with disabilities and illnesses can live in dignity. Today, we are abolishing tuition fees to end the profound injustice of student debt.’ Anything less is a missed opportunity and an indication that this government has refused to learn from the failures of the last.

Every budget, and every spending commitment, is a choice. Year on year, the chancellor chooses to spend more on weapons and war. Over the past year, the UK government has spent £60.2 billion on defence. Meanwhile, politicians bury their heads in the sand over the real threat to our security: the climate crisis. If the government was really interested in building a safer world, then maybe it would face up to the truth: there’s no security on a planet on fire. Where is the agenda for environmental sustainability or, dare I say the word — peace?

At a time when millions of people are struggling with the cost of living, spending billions more on the machinery of war is the wrong political choice. Why can’t we spend that money on something else instead? Say, a National Care Service? We don’t need to trade state pension security for social care. We can redistribute money away from war, away from corporations, away from the few, and toward a society that cares for each other and cares for all.