From the Editor: In Liz we Truss(t)?
The Care Home Environment Magazine
The Care Home Environment is the leading business information resource focusing on the build and equipping of care homes
It looks as though new prime minister Liz Truss will be making good on her commitment to scrapping the Health and Social Care Levy.
The levy was announced in September 2021 and implemented in April 2022. Controversial it may have been, but at least it was a sign that the government both recognised the need for social care reform and funding and, more importantly, had worked out a means by which an increased flow of funds to the social care sector could be achieved.
Nonetheless, while the levy was cautiously welcomed by some, there was no getting away from the fact that few saw it as any sort of panacea for the profound issues facing social care.
Now, barely six months later, the levy faces the axe.
In his final speech as prime minister, when Boris Johnson defended his record, he spoke of his pride in “delivering our manifesto commitments – including social care.” You would, I think it is fair to say, struggle to find anyone in social care who thought he had done any such thing.
New health secretary Thérèse Coffey has said that despite plans to ditch?the levy, health and social care spending will be unaffected. Specifically on the subject of the levy, Coffey told the BBC that “instead of having in effect a ring-fenced levy, we will be funding that out of general taxation, so the investment going to health and social care will stay exactly the same.”
With Liz Truss curating an?ever-growing list of financial commitments to be paid, somehow, from general taxation and/or borrowing - not least a widely predicted energy bill freeze - it seems that all social care can do at this point is join the queue and hope for the best.
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