10 September - Boris Johnson announces social care reform
Social care: What is Boris Johnson's new policy and who will it affect?
(ITV News, 07/09/2021)
Boris Johnson has abandoned his pledge not to raise the main rates of tax, as he set out plans to overhaul adult social care and deal with the Covid backlog in the NHS.
Here is what the proposal entails and who it will affect the most.
Will Boris Johnson’s plan for the NHS work?
Hugh Pym (BBC News, 09/09/2021)
Boris Johnson chose to visit a hospital he knows only too well to highlight the new funding package for the NHS in England.
He spent anxious days in intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital in central London in April 2020, seriously ill with Covid.
The pandemic continues to cast a long shadow over the NHS and that's because of uncertainty over how case numbers and hospital admissions will develop next year.
Boris Johnson’s care victory shows he can get away with sham policies – for now
Polly Toynbee (The Guardian, 09/09/2021)
He does it again, he pulls it off. The figure David Cameron once called the “greased piglet” has slipped from the grasp of his angry party and the Tory press, all incensed by this new levy. Boris Johnson trounced them, a mere five rebels. Despite featuring only 21st in popularity in ConservativeHome’s poll of party members, he defies them all.
As long as enough of the people can be fooled enough of the time, he will go on getting away with downright fraudulent policies. Breaking promises is a peccadillo compared with a social care policy that is a sham from top to toe. But, for now, his policy flies in a miasma of aspirational promises, while facts are what he says they are.
Social care reform: here’s why this tax rise isn’t just unfair on young people
Janette Rutterford (The Conversation, 09/09/2021)
In announcing his plan for funding social care reform in England and the NHS COVID recovery, prime minister Boris Johnson has to honour a promise he made two years ago on the steps of Downing Street.
The proposals outlined for a health and social care levy resurrect, albeit with different numbers, a series of proposals outlined over a decade ago in the Dilnot report.