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Andy Burnham Social Care: Free, Except for the Bill The small print has arrived... Andy Burnham stood at Labour conference and sold his National Care Service in the language of the NHS: “free at the point of use”, giving people “peace of mind”, and crucially, a system which “protects people’s homes and their savings”. He did so while speaking movingly about his own family’s experience of residential care. Then Fiona Bruce pressed Miatta Fahnbulleh on what that actually means. And suddenly the promise became considerably narrower. People going into a care home will STILL have to pay accommodation costs. Fahnbulleh acknowledged those costs could be “very hefty”. When Bruce pointed out that some people could therefore STILL end up having to sell their homes, Fahnbulleh did not deny it. She moved instead to the argument that free personal care should allow more people to remain in their own homes for longer. That distinction is everything. Labour is proposing free PERSONAL care based on need. It is not promising that every cost associated with living in a residential care home will disappear. The Government's own announcement carefully uses the phrase “no personal care charges”, while the final design is still to be worked out following Baroness Casey's recommendations. So we should correct one thing before Labour's ambiguity becomes our own: this does not mean personal care in a care home would necessarily remain chargeable. It means the accommodation and other living costs of residential care may remain chargeable. And if those bills remain substantial, the family home may still ultimately be caught in the means-testing system. That matters because Burnham didn't sell this from the conference stage as a minor extension of domiciliary care. He invoked the NHS, his father's care, the selling of his grandmother's home, and promised a service that would protect “people's homes and their savings”. For context, under England's existing 2026/27 system, the upper capital threshold remains just £23,250 and the lower threshold £14,250. Watch the exchange carefully. “Free social care” sounds magnificent from a conference platform. “Free personal care, but you may still face hefty residential accommodation charges and may still have to sell your home” is rather less likely to bring the hall to its feet. The difference between those two sentences is where the politics is hiding. Read more 👇 heartlandstribune.com/andy-b…