Andy Burnham has rightly made fixing social care a top priority and seems, on the face of it, to be genuinely interested in reaching a cross party consensus. Social care has been a priority for Liberal Democrats for a long time as well – I shed more than one or two tears when I first saw some of our election broadcasts from Ed Davey talking about his experiences.

The good news is that we don’t need to wait for the Casey Review to conclude in several years – the answers are already out there. In 2019, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee published a landmark report calling for £8bn investment in social care, followed by the introduction of free personal care in England. The committee at the time was chaired by the very right-wing Lord Forsyth – this is not a lefty fringe idea, but one that makes practical sense.

It was wisely adopted as our party’s policy in 2023 and a major plank of our manifesto in 2024.

Of course, post-Covid and an ever aging population would mean you need more than £8bn today – some estimates as much as £18bn for transformative social care by 2036.

Frankly, Liberal Democrats need to be a bit less squeamish about asking people to pay more tax. Real substantial taxes rather than fiddling with the Digital Services Tax which is paying for seemingly everything (incidentally widening its base to cover more products like user data sales and streaming services as France and Denmark do or expanding it to AI companies would generate substantially more revenue than upping the headline rate).

The main beneficiaries of making personal care free are people like my family – a fair amount of wealth and assets (a 3 bed detached house in Berkshire and investments) but not necessarily cash rich. The fairest solution is to look at taxing wealth more, rather than working people during a cost of living crisis, so the main beneficiaries are the main contributors. Equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax, and removing some of the egregious loopholes would raise upwards of £11.3bn a year as well as removing distortions which would promote economic growth. It is also backed by the IFS.

We could also look at Corporate Tax reform. The introduction of Public Country by Country Reporting, a tool designed to tackle aggressive profit shifting by the largest multinational companies, is estimated by the Tax Justice Network to raise £5bn by the end of this parliament and is already on the statute books, it’s just never been implemented.

This does leave us £2bn short, but as was noted in our manifesto substantial savings will be made to the NHS if we fix social care and are able to get patients out of high cost hospitals and into lower cost proper social care.

You generally only use social care twice in your life – once when your parents get old and need it, then again when you yourself get old and need it. Incremental improvements won’t be felt in a way they will with the NHS or other public services that we use on a regular basis.

Burnham, and the Lib Dems, could choose the path of least resistance – Dilnot style caps, a few extra care packages, more funding etc. No one will notice and no one will feel like anything has improved. No one will feel reassured if they only have to pay £70,000 for social care rather than £150,000. This was Starmer’s downfall – incrementalism just won’t cut the mustard in our populist age.

So let’s grasp the bull by the horns and push for the radical change we promised in 2024 – free personal care and sustained investment, funded through progressive and substantial tax reforms on wealth and the biggest multinationals.

Reform, the Tories and some of the right-wing press will stamp their feet – but let’s stand up for something that the country can rally behind.

* Joe Wright is a member in Lambeth and who worked at Lib Dem HQ from 2021 to 2025 developing the party's long-term policies.