But what is a national care service? Well according to the PM all care will be free at the point of use - like the NHS - but the NCS will not be another NHS, we as a nation can’t afford that. So what will it be, the honest answer is we don’t know. I have my own opinions, but until the first finding of the Casey Commission start to surface next year we can only speculate 

I don’t doubt the PM is sincere, there is real emotion when he talks about his late father and he has lived experience of the current system, however Tuesdays announcement was to rally the party faithful and lacked any real detail other than any meaningful change will not happen until the next parliament. This is too long.

I accept designing a national care service - whatever it may look like - will not happen overnight but there needs to be concrete steps soon to alleviate the pain the system finds itself in. He envisages the new system being paid for by changes to the pension triple lock. This may be the case but no matter how it is funded it must be properly funded to remove the current system of postcodes lotteries and mounting local authorities debt. Or else any changes will do nothing other than move the pain somewhere else 

The CAA launched a paper on how we see the care system, funded in the future with commissioning control staying very much at local level but all funding being held centrally, using agreed national frameworks. We call on the PM and the Casey Commission to review the paper as we see it as a pragmatic step towards his national care service ambitions .

Keiron Broadbent

CEO, West Midlands Care Association.