It is a brave party leader who is prepared to go into an election promising a multibillion-pound new public service – likely to be funded by tax rises or holding back increases in the state pension.
But Andy Burnham’s colleagues are excited about the confident promise of new social care system that seven previous prime ministers have failed to deliver.
“I’m not worried about it because we have time to make the case,” said one cabinet minister, who was asked about the difficulty of getting voters on board.
David Cameron’s team is credited with inventing the political metaphor of “pitch-rolling” – borrowing from cricket to describe how leaders need to start preparing bumpy ground in advance if they want their policy to flourish.
This appeared to be Burnham’s strategy for getting the public used to the idea of paying more into a system that will give them protection in old age when he floated his ambition in a Sunday morning interview.
It is not clear yet how the prime minister intends to fund a service that could cost up to £18bn a year, according to some estimates. Reform UK has already claimed that a “death tax” could be brought in to pay for it. Economists have raised the idea that the pension triple lock could be scrapped to help fund the costs.
Whatever the mechanism, Labour strategists are hoping that over the course of the coming years, all the arguments will have been had, the sting of the opposition’s attacks will have worn off and the scheme as a whole will be baked into views of what the party is offering at the next election.
That way they would seek to avoid the failure of Theresa May’s abrupt attempt to overhaul social care during the 2017 election when she surprised voters – and her own party – with the idea of making people pay for their own care if they had more than £100,000 in assets. The plan did not survive for long when it became clear that more older people might have to sell their own homes to fund personal care.
An attempt by Gordon Brown and Burnham himself failed in 2010, when a discussion paper raised the idea of a levy on the estates after death as well as a contributory system. However, the government did not reach a consensus on how it should be funded, and then lost the subsequent election.
If he learns the lesson of those previous attempts, Burnham has almost three years to make his case and try to win over the doubters who think the problem is too difficult to resolve.
And every year, with an ageing population and the social care system under strain, more and more people have realised system is a lottery, where many elderly people and their families largely have to fund their own care.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at AJ Bell, said it was a “difficult move politically, because it has immediately sparked speculation as to how it would be funded”, but it “could dramatically change lives for the millions of people who have someone in their life who needs care”.
Whether the plan will end up being funded by older people, those of working age, or both, there are obvious perils in going into the next election signalling that people will have to pay more when household budgets are under severe pressure.
Governments have a particular phobia of targeting pension benefits because of the tendency of older people to vote with their pockets. The memory of attempts by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to cut the winter fuel allowance is burned into the minds of Labour MPs, who had to deal with an angry backlash from a surprised public.
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And no party has dared touch the triple lock – which promises the state pension will rise by the higher of inflation, earnings or 2.5% – since it was created by the Conservatives in 2010.
However, that is why some policy brains think there is a golden opportunity to create a trade-off aimed directly at older people, offering a better care system in return for a weakening of the guarantee.
The former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell has told LBC: “You put social care and you amend the triple lock at the same time. You do that as a package, which leaves older people much better off and is revenue neutral.”
Alex Clegg, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, said the savings from the triple lock might not be billions in the course of a parliament but more could be clawed back in the long term. He also said savings from the triple lock might be an “easier sell to pensioners” if changes came in tandem with better social care.
Burnham is expected to set out some more details of his vision for a social care system in his conference speech on Tuesday. He may not yet have all the answers about how it will be paid for, with a review of the system by Louise Casey still to come.
But Labour MPs believe he is the right person to start laying the foundations for change. One senior Labour figure said: “Unlike Keir, he can make an argument, and everyone hopes he can take the country with us.”
