John McDonald MP was Correct in 2019 that’s why Sajid Javid should ignore failed Northumberland experiment and ‘Fix Care for England’

 

Labour’s John McDonald MP was completely correct in 2019 when proposing and pricing a national Care Service for the UK. The only sticking point in his plan would be to create a new costly service to manage and finance joint working between the NHS and Local Government.

Sajid Javid has now suggested that he is investigating if a National Care Service could help smooth out the finance being scooped up through the additional National Insurance Tax being placed on the shoulders of workers to support care which his boss Boris Johnson is steering towards the NHS for the next three years. 

This investigation sits on the back of warnings from Age UK that Council Tax will have to rise by 10% and be held there for three years by which time it will be the norm to cover the cost of care.

The national experiment for integrated care was undertaken in Northumberland and for a look at whether a seamless service could be designed it was an unmitigated success. 

But as Councils are democratic institutions and the NHS a nationally guided body the needs of some elected members to see where they can fit in to the power game of decision making (and probably money making) was always going to defeat the project in the long term, and Northumberland County Council’s sullied reputation for bullying of officers and malice towards opposition members and observers was something that their NHS partners were unable to accept.

With a number of the local Government protagonists being taken through the standards board, who have brought in external advisors to drive investigations forwards and offer protection to decision makers, we here at Murky believe the NHS were correct to step back, but Sajid Javid's new look at Care should be able to correct the mistakes made by Edward Heath's teams in the run up to 1974.

The Heath teams conundrum was to keep as many Tories in office as Councillors as the whole of Local Government was broken down and enlarged areas formed into County Councils with Education and Highways and District Councils with the responsibility for Housing and Planning, in order to ensure Counties had a better role his departments gave Care Services to Local Government and not the NHS, causing the problems that we have in a non-seamless service being experienced by service users today.

Governments of both colours have changed the face of Local Government over the years and the creation of all purpose unitary councils of all sizes are becoming more common. Unitarisation means lower Councillor numbers, now agreed to be spread too thinly to ensure proper decision making leading to lower levels of scrutiny that allows bullying and intimidation to grow; and with the other major problem for the nation ‘Housing Need’ also handled by those same Councillors it's probably time for Sajid Javid to make a decision to really integrate care with health through this opportunity to investigate and allow the democratic process to resolve the nations housing problems without the interference from the worries of running a care service that should be able to show those in need that a true seamless service is available from the the trusted NHS and ‘Fix Care for England’.