Damian Green’s social care model breaches a sacred tenet of the NHS – and a good thing, too

The central proposal in Damian Green’s recent paper on social care is that care provision should be treated like pensions. In ‘Fixing the care crisis’, he argues that everyone should be entitled to ‘a decent standard of care’ funded by the state – in the same way as they are entitled to a state pension – but could then choose to ‘top up’ from their own resources to add what he calls ‘bells and whistles’.

The benefits from such a system, as he sees it – and I agree – could be manifold. It should eliminate the patent injustice, according to which cancer care is fully state-funded while dementia care is not, and many other chronic conditions, such as MS and Parkinson’s fall somewhere (often disputed) in between. Removing the social care funding responsibility from local authorities should also remove the disincentive to build adapted housing for elderly people and care homes.