Burnham to give speech on social care as Louise Casey plays down cost concerns saying many families ‘already paying’ – UK politics live

PM will not discuss details but will focus on need to find ‘common ground’ and to build political consensus

Good morning. Andy Burnham is this morning giving a speech on social care. He is not going to discuss in any detail at all the sort of reform to the system he wants to implement, but instead he will focus on his intention to build a political consensus on the changes needed. He will say:

For decades, governments have kicked this issue down the road because they’ve seen it as too risky, too difficult, and too complicated.

Politicians might have different views but I’m serious about fixing this issue and to do that, we have to find common ground and listen to others to find a way forward.

If Andy Burnham is serious about putting politics aside to solve Britain’s biggest problems, it’s remarkable that he’s chosen to ignore the party that led over 300 national opinion polls and represents thousands of councillors and millions of Britons across the country.

It’s now clear that Burnham is conspiring behind closed doors with the failed political establishment to foist further tax rises on the country.

The vision that we must have for our country when it comes to a National Care Service is that the public do not have to face this constant battle lines between who does what and how … The vision, surely, is that we have something that basically is simple and straightforward, that the public know is going to be there.

Incidentally, they’re already paying for [care]. So this idea that somehow somebody’s going to come along and say, ‘Hello, here’s a whole new service and a whole new tax’ is just kind of cloud cuckoo land.