Alan Wheatley - General taxation and funding of social care
19 March 2010
Alan Wheatley, Green Party spokesperson on disability issues, comments on the funding of social care:
In a Times online comment article, Prof Peter Beresford (a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's independent living committee) cites strong service user support for funding of social care out of general taxation, along with concern about goverment associating service users with "burden."
His conclusions are very close to Green Party policy and can serve as a cue for debating Citizens Income:
Beresford: "[Research respondents] see social care as a means of maximising people's quality of life and capacity to contribute and reject the Green Paper's presentation of older and disabled people as a burden to working-age people. They argue that properly funded social care prevents problems, reduces costs and enables people of all ages to contribute, both socially and economically, as taxpayers. Until recently, the position of anyone arguing that general taxation should be explored as a possible way of funding social care was equivalent to admitting that the emperor was wearing no clothes. The climate seems to have changed.
"If we are to have the sustainable, fair and cost-effective social care that everyone admits is essential for future generations, debate cannot be hemmed in with artificial constraints, based on simplistic assumptions about cost. Instead open, full, frank and most of all, inclusive debate that involves service users and carers on equal terms, which extends beyond the funding of social care to consider its very nature, is what is most needed."
Peter Beresford told me last year by e-mail that he does not generally discuss the Green Party, because the Green Party "is not yet a contender in popular understanding to be a general election winner or decider, so it still doesn't feature as one of the major political parties in the UK at least." Yet in the past month, he saw to it that I was included as a panel member at his lecture to Sir Wm Beveridge Foundation on the future funding of social care.
In my talk to the Sir Wm Beveridge Foundation, I focused on the pernicious influences of privatised welfare and also the neglect - in public spending priorities - of lifelong learners "non-occupational" education. Peter Beresford, and Rosemary O'Neill of CarerWatch, particularly spoke to me of the incisiveness of my input regarding the interplay between privatisation of welfare reform and privatisation of the welfare state. And my own experience (in 2004) of entitlement to lifelong learning being given lower priority than that of "preparing a workforce to implement the London 2012 Olympics" has been recently echoed by Gordon Brown on last weekend's Sunday Politics. He said that the focus of adult learning must be on qualification levels 2 and above - thus implying that the requirements of my 2010 adult learners to whom I volunteer my services as an ICT coach now, as per those of my 2004 adult learners with learning difficulties - are inessential to the economy.
Clearly, there is much more work to do after the general election in terms of promoting policy on social care and lifelong education. I hope that Green Party general election candidates' commitment to pledges from CarerWatch and Every Disabled Child Matters will make a difference.
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