In an interview with the Guardian, Wes Streeting said he had asked the Fabian Society to consider how the service would be funded and structured, with a view to introducing it over several parliaments. He said the immediate priority would be to provide better pay, training and full employment rights for carers and stronger national standards. The “long-term vision” would be a national service on par with Aneurin Bevan’s vision for the NHS. “I would love to see a national care service delivered on exactly the same terms as the NHS, publicly owned, publicly funded, free at the point of use, but we have to be honest about the scale of the challenge. So our starting point is to make sure we deliver national standards for care users and better pay and conditions for staff working in social care,” said Streeting. He added: “I think the key to a national care service is that it’s a journey, not an event. We could not deliver this overnight or even in a single parliament. “It’s about how we lay the foundations for that in the first term of a Labor government and then try to build on that in a second or third term.” He raised concerns about many care homes owned by private equity groups, with one in seven not meeting standards and needing improvement. The review will look at whether privately owned care homes could be brought into public ownership. “If private providers want to continue to play a role in social care delivery, then they need to provide good quality care and with a public service ethos,” he said. Streeting said he was “really open-minded” about who should be in charge of the state’s national care service, whether the NHS, local councils or another body. Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn promised a national health service in his 2019 manifesto, but his successor, Keir Starmer, said he was wiping the slate clean and writing the manifesto from scratch. Streeting said a national care service was “unfinished business” for Labour, which published a white paper on the idea as one of its last acts in government. “As Keir Starmer launched this week, Labor is starting anew and writing a manifesto that looks to the future without being bound by the past. We will work for a national care service,” he said. “That is where Labor is and that is my commitment as shadow health secretary. And one argument I want to get across is that if we don’t tackle the crisis in social care, it will be harder to resolve the backlog of the NHS.” In the social care review, the Fabian Society will look at the structure of the home care market and how the next Labor government will guarantee good standards of care for all and professional standards for carers across the sector. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Last month, the Scottish Government unveiled plans for a national care service to overhaul adult care with a focus on care at home. It would not nationalize the sector but would make care company bosses directly accountable to Scottish ministers in a more centralized system. Scottish Labor said it was not a real national care service but a “power grab” aimed at taking power away from local councils, while Unite called it a “incomprehensible, incoherent and appalling bill”.
