16 October 2026
Most people spend decades working, saving and paying for their family home – only to risk losing it if they or someone they love needs social care in later life.
Recent research found that more than a third of people contributing towards their care had used money from selling a family home to help meet the cost.
For too many families, ageing and illness bring not only worry about somebody they love, but the fear of losing what they spent a lifetime working for.
That must change.
For decades, governments of all colours have recognised that our social care system is broken. Reports have been commissioned and promises made. Yet too often the difficult decisions needed to fix it have been ducked.
Recently, the problem has worsened. Fourteen years of Conservative government, particularly the deep cuts imposed through austerity, placed enormous pressure on councils and the services vulnerable people depend upon. Social care was stretched to breaking point, while the NHS was left picking up the pieces.
We also have an ageing population and growing demand for complex care. The result? A huge, systemic challenge.
This cannot be solved by tinkering. Now is not the time for timidity – it’s the time for bold ambition.
That’s why I strongly support the Prime Minister’s proposal for a National Care Service, providing free social care for older people based on need, rather than ability to pay.
Just as the NHS established the principle that nobody should be denied healthcare because they cannot afford it, a National Care Service would extend that principle to social care.
For older people in Barnsley, it could mean getting the support they need to live independently without enormous care costs. For their families, it could provide peace of mind that a loved one’s illness will not also become a financial catastrophe. It would also ease pressure on our NHS, helping prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.
Of course, an ambition of this scale must be properly funded.
The existing Triple Lock will remain unchanged throughout this Parliament. By the end of it, the full new State Pension is expected to be worth around £2,000 a year more than when Labour took office.
Beyond that, the PM has started an important conversation about whether we could keep the State Pension rising, whilst also unlocking extra money to help fund a National Care Service.
I think that could offer pensioners and their families a much better overall deal: a State Pension that continues to rise, alongside free personal care and much greater protection from potentially catastrophic care costs.
The details are not fixed, and there is important work to do. But the Prime Minister deserves credit for being prepared to confront a problem that governments have ducked for decades, and for putting forward a bold and ambitious proposal to fix it.
The Government will now work through the detail before putting its plans to the public ahead of the next General Election.
After decades of delay, we finally have an opportunity to build a fairer care system.
We should be ambitious enough to take it.