Government takes the trash out with barrage of sneaky announcements

Quiet Fridays are the best sorts of days to bury bad news: or at least so the Whitehall wisdom goes. That doesn’t seem to have worked today, given that ministers’ attempts to bury three bits of awkward news have been picked up – and because it’s a relatively quiet news day, they’re getting a good amount of attention. Today is clearly a take-the-trash-out day, when ministers get rid of a load of announcements that involve them admitting they’re either doing something unpopular, or they’re not going to do something that they are supposed to be doing. Today’s trash includes:

1. The government is delaying the cap on social care costs until April 2020.

In a letter to Izzi Seccombe of the Local Government Association, Alistair Burt writes that ‘we have taken the difficult decision to delay the introduction of the cap on care costs system and that this will now be introduced from April 2020’.