Social care funding is broken

Kemi Badenoch, pressed on the Today programme about the leisurely pace of her policy agenda, and the looming council elections, insisted on Tuesday morning that ‘welfare is not a local government issue’. On the ballot instead, she suggested, were such issues as ‘who’s fixing the roads, potholes, [and] adult social care’.

This answer seems plausible, and that tells us much about what has gone so wrong with local government, and the increasingly huge democratic deficit in our local politics. For adult social care is a welfare issue.

It is true that town halls do not govern capital-W Welfare, narrowly conceived in terms of Universal Credit, Pension Credit, et al. Nor do they manage other major elements of the welfare state, such as the National Health Service or (with the exception of their own funds) pensions.

But they are responsible for two things: the aforementioned adult social care, and children’s services. And such is the strain of servicing these obligations that, if current trends continue, councils will end up without the funds to take good care of anything else.