Paul Burstow’s legacy as social care minister

Social care seems to be a key area of policy where the fault lines between the coalition parties can be clearly seen

At a time when there has been much talk of legacies, it is perhaps worth considering that of the social care minister Paul Burstow, now that he has returned to the back benches in the cabinet reshuffle.

I remember being in a room packed with third-sector, social-care leaders early in his period of office when he begged us to have trust and not to judge progress by the first year, but by the government’s overall achievement. The sector was supportive. Burstow came with strong credentials: a parliamentary commitment to the rights of older and disabled people and an understanding of social care. He made efforts to meet people and listen to what they had to say. The words “carer” and “service user” were rarely off his lips.

However, the government’s record for social care is a far from reassuring one. The promise was for comprehensive and unified policy reform which would transform legislation and practice and at last put social care funding on a sustainable footing. This positive package is, clearly, no longer on offer. What has been left is much more worrying.

Personalisation and personal budgets, to which the coalition nailed its colours as the route to good practice – as did New Labour before it – appears to be coming apart at the seams. Many service users, carers and practitioners have expressed their worries about them. The rhetoric about “transformation” has been lost in fears that, as implemented, personalisation is creating at least as many problems as solutions.

As for social care funding, it was only last month that messages went out that the government had changed its mind and was now planning to go with the Dilnot recommendations in some form. But since these were proposed, increasing concerns about how well Dilnot’s recommendations will actually work, and how much they will actually cost individuals who need care, have been raised by the private sector and local government, adding to those highlighted by services users.

Social care seems to be a key area of policy where the fault lines between the coalition parties can be seen. We saw a dramatic expression of this just before the last general election on an extended live Channel 4 news item. Spokespeople for all three main political parties were given the chance, in front of a social care audience, to set out their positions. While Labour and the Liberal Democrats were happy to talk in the spirit of consensus, Andrew Lansley was not, highlighting the gulf between the Conservatives and the other parties. There is little sign that this has changed.

Norman Lamb was the Lib Dem spokesperson for social care who took part in that discussion. He has now returned as minister and, like his predecessor, has a strong background of expertise and commitment in this field.

Whether he will be able to bring any more success to the role than Paul Burstow remains to be seen. He will have to do so in a context of a cabinet shift to the right, continuing draconian cuts in local government spending, which particularly affect social care and its service users and, perhaps most of all, the most determined attack on disabled people through continuing welfare reform in modern memory.

We may wonder what hopes there are as Lamb takes up his new office under his new boss, Jeremy Hunt. Social care activists are likely to be expecting more hard times and more hard struggle.