Health and social care secretary letter to parliamentarians on social care

On 6 March 2020, Secretary of Health and Social Care Matt Hancock published a letter to all parliamentarians in order to ‘begin the process of seeking to build a cross-party consensus on social care’. This was a Conservative manifesto commitment during the 2019 General Election.

In his letter, Matt Hancock said he was looking for contributions across the political spectrum on how best to fund social care. He highlighted that successive governments had failed to find an effective solution to the issue of funding social care, and how to balance private and state contribution to the cost of care. He announced that there would be a phase of structured talks on social care reform options in May 2020.

Later developments

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cross-party talks on adult social care reform were delayed. In a speech on 30 June 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke on his commitment to tackle the problem of social care and stated that: ‘We are finalising our plans and we will build a cross-party consensus.’