So many people across the UK are struggling because of a lack of decent social care. Millions are stuck in pain on NHS waiting lists.
In the past few days alone, I’ve heard some heartbreaking accounts of people having to wait for months for both cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The crisis in social care causes immense suffering for elderly and disabled people and those who care for them.
So you would think, given that health and social care are consistently near the top of people’s priorities, that Keir Starmer might have had something to say in his speech yesterday.
But, no.
Ed Davey called him out for it:
Only the out-of-touch Conservative Party will deny the scale of the challenges facing the new Government and the new Parliament. From the millions stuck on NHS waiting lists to the millions struggling to make ends meet, the last Conservative government has left a toxic legacy.
We need bold and ambitious action from the Government to fix this mess. Liberal Democrats will work tirelessly to put our positive ideas forward and hold the new Government to account if they fail to rise to the challenges facing the country.
Above all, people want urgent, ambitious action to fix the health and care crisis. Only by getting people off NHS waiting lists can we get the economy growing strongly again and ensure more funding for our public services in the long term.
Nobody disputes that the Labour Party inherited an absolute midden when they won the General Election. The state of our public finances is terrifying and I think that we will all have to pay somehow to help fix them. And those who are lucky enough to be on higher incomes should bear the brunt of it.
But if they don’t sort out waiting lists and social care, then people won’t be able to get back to work and fill their tax coffers. Even if you have no soul and are only interested in numbers, it’s clear that action now will save money in the medium and long term.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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15 Comments
Thank you for the article.
Where can a list of L. D. « positive ideas be found »?
In the manifesto.
There are lots of challenges in this Parliament but early bad portents of the Labour Government are not good. Firstly this Government were elected by only 33.7% of the vote and the turnout was 60%. The vote was more against the Conservatives than giving Labour free rein. The new Government have already behaved very badly in taking away Fuel Allowance for State Pensioners whilst rewarding their Trade Union paymasters with large rises without productivity benefits to ASLEF and the BMA. We are probably on the cusp of the discredited 1974-9 Labour Government that over borrowed, over taxed and allowed Unions to have inflationary pay demands.
@DavidSymonds. Easy to criticise, but what is our alternative? Without a move away from orthodox economics and its belief in black holes, laffer curves and trickle down economics our party can say little about what ultra orthodox Rachel Reeves is doing especially since we showed a strong belief in austerity when in government. Until we recognise that there is scope for spending/investment in public services and stop pretending there is a black hole then whatever we offer will be hot air.
@Mick Taylor. We can only move away from “orthodox” economics if we can demonstrate it’s doctrines are false. We are an evidence based party. So, at risk of be labeled “orthodox” (I did once teach A level economics, so what do you expect !) can I suggest that 1) black holes, which I take to mean budget deficits are a reality, they can be tolerated in the short term, but IMO, will cause problems if allowed to grow unaddressed. 2) There must be some truth to the Laffer curve if we assume labour and capital can cross national borders and that people will seek to minimise their tax bill. However, 3) the experience of the past 50 years, where the distribution of wealth and income have become less equal, suggest trickle down theory is self serving nonsense.
Our attack on Labour should focus on the political choices they make, rather than their focus on balancing the books.
Orthodox economics generally refers to the dominant school of thought described as New Keynesianism which, as the name suggests, is a modern form of Keynesianism that was developed in light of the negative experiences with Keynesian demand management and inflation in the 1970s. Keynes was a Liberal and wanted to save capitalism.
The focus of New Keynesianism is on monetary stimulus via interest rates as a demand and inflation management tool rather than fiscal stimulus via tax and spending that is favoured by post-keynesian schools like MMT.
Other unorthodox schools include Austrians (let it all burn down and start again) and Marxism (see Russian and Chinese revolutions). Karl Marx was probably right when he argued that capitalism would plunge the middle classes into something like the precarious existence of the hard-pressed workers of his time, Marx anticipated “a change in the way we live that we’re only now struggling to cope with” A Point of View: The revolution of capitalism
“Whatever politicians may tell us about the need to curb the deficit, debts on the scale that have been run up can’t be repaid. Almost certainly they will be inflated away – a process that is bound to be painful and impoverishing for many..”
David Symonds,
While I agree the new Labour Government has got off to a bad start, by scrapping the universality of the pensioners Winter Fuel Allowance, plus refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap. The reason is because this government is reluctant to increase taxes.
I don’t think your view of the 1974-9 Labour Government is correct.
Mick Taylor,
We need to move away from our new neo-liberal fiscal rule of getting the national debt falling as a share of the economy.
Chris Cory,
Did you really teach your A level economics students that UK government’s should not have run a budget deficit for years?
Do you really believe that government spending should be determined by whether the national debt is falling as a share of the economy in five years’ time?
To the utopian socialists I would say we don’t want another revolution; we’ve had one already in the shape of Brexit and look where that has got us. That being said there’s a case for increasing property taxes by, for example, removing the single person discount on properties in higher bands; and increasing capital gains and inheritance taxes. Labour have hinted they will do this. But the problem with the some of these measures is the receipts can be low and take time to arrive. So, sadly for the utopians, there are no easy answers.
@ Joe,
It is true that the modern orthodoxy is often referred to as New Keynesianism. However as this is essentially a development of a monetarist macroeconomic theory which came about long after Keynes’ death it should be classed as a misnomer. It isn’t consistent with Keynesian theory as expounded by Keynes himself .
It is sometimes abbreviated to NK which I’d suggest should be read as ‘Not Keynesianism’.
Attached is an article which presents a positive alternative to Mr. Starmer’s somewhat negative statements which might be worth L. D. consideration and even discussion.
Please note its possibly more eye and attention catching presentation.
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/community/blogs/richardmurphy/fantasy-budget-richard-murphys-plan-for-sustainable-growth
@Steve: I’m afraid that accountingweb article by Richard Murphy you’ve linked to contains some rather basic flaws. To take just a couple:
Richard starts by proposing – purely for political reasons – to override the interest rate that the Bank of England experts believe is best for the economy. That ought to already be ringing alarm bells. He goes on to claim that he can raise £70Bn for investment by requiring new ISAs to be Green new deal accounts- but he doesn’t seem to notice that that’s not new investment: It’s investment diverted from other industries, so no new money raised at all! (And – worse – since his proposal it amounts to the Government regulating to prevent funds from investing in those industries that they believe will give the best return, it’s likely to reduce GDP going forward by making investment less productive.
Later in the article he proposes, amongst other things, to raise more tax from pension funds by changing their tax relief rules but he misses noticing that that will eventually feed into reducing many pensioners’ incomes. He proposes the same thing for tax relief on charitable donations, thereby immediately making it less worth while donating to charity, but doesn’t seem to think about the implications of that.
Sadly, those kinds of flaws are the reason why I personally no longer give much credence to anything Richard Murphy writes about economics.
There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the health services.
Cutting the winter fuel allowance is very much an own goal as it was not in the Labour manifesto, bringing their integrity into question, and will not only cause hardship to many older retired people but also increase the winter pressures on the NHS at the very time the Government is committed to reducing waiting lists.
Britain already had one of the lowest state pensions in the development world, which people sometimes try to defend (the indefensible) by quoting the add ons such as the winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions and bus passes.
Older retired people recently lost their free television licence, got no benefit from the recent cuts in National Insurance, and have now been singled out as the only group of people to have a cut in their gross income. This is Age discrimination at its worst and must be reversed.
@Chris Perry: What’s your source for claiming the UK state pension is one of the lowest in the developed World? I’ve seen numerous claims like that in the past but they’ve always turned out to be not comparing like with like.
As I understand it, the UK state pension is somewhat unusual because it’s designed so everyone gets the same amount (assuming all contributions paid), and if you want more, it’s assumed you’ll additionally invest in a private scheme before you retire. By contrast, most European countries have a state pension that’s salary based, which means the maximum amount payable is very high – but is actually only paid to a very small number of people who had exceptionally high salaries when working. That makes it very easy to set up misleading comparisons between the fixed UK state pension rate and the highest possible rate in other countries – which in my experience is usually where these UK-is-so-mean comparisons go wrong.
Simon R. There are dozens of comparative studies. However, the main point here is that older people have been discriminated against being the only group of people to have had a cut in their gross income. They also recently lost their free television licence and got no benefit from the recent cuts in National Insurance. How on earth can that be justified?
If there have been dozens of studies, then it shouldn’t be too hard to find and link to a couple of them 🙂
But aside from that, it seems a bit much to me to claim discrimination. Because of the triple lock, pensions have increased by much more than wages recently: Over the last 2 years the basic state pension has risen by over 19% (from £141.85 to £169.50 a week for a single person), so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that there would be some correction.