PRIME MINISTER Andy Burnham has pledged to reform Britain's social care system, saying he wants to ease pressure on the National Health Service (NHS).
Speaking to the BBC in an interview broadcast on Monday, one week after taking office, Burnham said fixing social care would be one of his priorities and that he wanted to deliver major changes before leaving office.
"Whatever political capital I have, I will put into fixing broken social care and I would not want to leave office without having brought in the substantial change," Burnham said.
Unlike the publicly funded NHS, which is dealing with long waiting lists and stretched resources, social care for elderly and disabled people in Britain is largely privatised.
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Burnham, whose father has Alzheimer's, has campaigned for changes to the social care system for years, including during his time as health secretary under Gordon Brown between 2009 and 2010.
While serving as health secretary, he proposed creating a publicly funded National Care Service that would be free at the point of use, like the NHS, but those plans were not implemented.
"I will go as quickly as I can on the reform of social care," Burnham said, adding that while bringing in a new system would "take time" he still hoped to achieve "substantial change" while in office.
At present, home and residential care is means-tested, and local authorities responsible for providing the services are finding it difficult to meet the needs of an ageing population.
The NHS's long-running shortages of beds and staff are partly linked to delays in discharging elderly and dependent patients who do not have social care arrangements in place.
The prime minister also said Britain needed to reduce its welfare bill and suggested making it harder to access some benefits in an effort to help more people return to work.
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"It's about changing the nature of the support and making some of the support conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them," Burnham said.
His predecessor, Keir Starmer, had attempted to reform the welfare system but scaled back the proposals after facing opposition from within his own party.
