Westminster unites in anger over secret talks to reach care Bill deal

Andrew Lansley pulled off the rare feat yesterday of uniting his own Tory front benches and the Labour front benches in anger against him, amid new recriminations over Gordon Brown’s social care plans.

The Shadow Health Secretary appears to have been “freelancing” when he made the first approaches to Norman Lamb, his Liberal Democrat opposite number, and Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, about a potential care deal for the elderly.

Astonishingly, all of them seem to have been acting without the knowledge of their respective bosses, and, six months before a general election, were trying to secure an all-party agreement on one of the most controversial issues of our time. As The Times has reported, council care leaders are in revolt over the plans.

Today that attempted deal is in tatters, with accusations of betrayal flying around Westminster — most of them aimed at Mr Lansley.

On Wednesday David Cameron’s office said initially that it had no idea of the talks. Two hours later it said that the party leader was aware — but refused to say at what stage he was involved or how much he was told. One thing is certain: there was no chance of any consensus once the decision for a poster campaign attacking Labour’s “death tax” was signed off.

Insiders have told The Times that all three men had agreed that their discussions were to remain confidential. After Mr Lamb called in the Commons debate on the Personal Care at Home Bill in November for the parties to work out together a solution to one of the biggest problems facing any government, Mr Lansley approached him in Portcullis House at Westminster.

At that stage Mr Lansley was not talking about consensus. Instead, he suggested that the legislation before Parliament should become a “paving Bill” that would allow for more far-reaching reforms in the next Parliament. Mr Lamb rejected that idea on the ground that Mr Lansley might be trying to push through a mechanism for passing more difficult measures without the need to resort to primary legislation.

Mr Lamb said that the way forward was consensus, although Mr Lansley was not convinced at that stage. Even so, it was Mr Lansley who initiated talks with Mr Burnham, again pushing his “paving Bill” idea.

There was enough common ground for a meeting, and, in the first week of December, Mr Lamb booked Meeting Room T in Portcullis House for what were intensely secret discussions.

Although Mr Lansley remained agnostic about a consensus approach, there was a long discussion about the principles of any agreement, where they could agree and where they quite clearly could not.

What has shocked many of his Conservative colleagues is that Mr Lansley, seen by some as independent-minded, by others as a maverick, felt able to pursue such discussions even though the Labour Party itself was clearly split on the issue. One senior MP said yesterday: “Andrew’s instinct is not always to go for the political raw meat. He either did not see it or did not want to see it.”

The meeting broke up with an agreement to meet later in the month. As it happened, that did not take place until the day that MPs returned from Christmas on January 5, again in Portcullis House, in Meeting Room 8.

At the 90-minute session real progress was made, with Mr Burnham and Mr Lansley agreeing that Mr Lamb should be the “moderator” as they tried to isolate their real differences and find a mechanism for going forward on areas of agreement.

It ended with the Shadow Health Secretary far keener on the idea of an agreement and Mr Burnham deciding to send in “statements of principle” to Mr Lamb, with him drawing them together into a “consensus paper”.

Throughout, the three men spoke frankly to each other, setting out their personal, as opposed to their agreed party, positions. They felt reasonably safe with each other.

Mr Lansley’s two-page statement came back within days and Mr Burnham’s, in the form of a lengthy text message, a few days afterwards. Mr Lamb duly sent out a three-page paper to the others and waited. The silence from Lansley territory was deafening. It was at this point, Mr Lamb and Mr Burnham suspect, that the Conservative hierarchy found out about Mr Lansley’s involvement.

Mr Cameron and his communications chief, Andy Coulson, were not pleased.

The care Bill was becoming ever more controversial and councillors responsible for care, some of them Labour, lined up to attack it. The Conservative leadership had to distance itself from it rapidly and used one of the options in the care Green Paper — a possible £20,000 levy on estates to pay for long-term care — as its ammunition.

On Wednesday the Conservatives put out posters saying: “Now Gordon wants £20,000 when you die. Don’t vote for Labour’s new death tax.”

A furious Mr Burnham, having got wind of the posters a day earlier, called Mr Lamb and told him that Mr Lansley had broken ranks and betrayed him.

He regarded the posters as double dealing after a serious attempt to reach an outline agreement. Whether he was particularly angry because the Tories had focused on the estates levy, a plan with which he could have expressed personal sympathy, was the subject of strong speculation in the Commons.

Mr Lamb and Mr Burnham were confident in Mr Lansley’s good faith when the talks were secret. But they regarded what happened after Mr Cameron found out as a complete breach.

Mr Lamb said last night that the “puerile” behaviour of the past few days should not stand in the way of a consensus deal in future. “This has been utterly self-destructive but this cannot be sorted without agreement.”

Mr Lansley’s spokesman has said that at no point was a consensus reached “because we entered into the discussions with a set of principles”.