Get private equity out and put co-operatives at the heart of the new National Care Service
4 min read
At Labour Party Conference last month, the Prime Minister made a moving tribute to his late father, and made the case for urgent reform to the social care system that he has personally seen fail.
His experience resonates because it is an all too tragically familiar tale of families watching as overworked carers on poverty pay work tirelessly to provide a standard of care the system simply doesn’t allow, while their loved ones pay the price.
At PMQs this week, I spoke about my own family’s story. My grandparents are both former teachers with decades of public service. Yet, now they need looking after, they have been forced to go through their savings and their pension to get my granny the care she needs. Ours isn’t a unique story but one shared by thousands of people in Ipswich and across the country.
Around 80 per cent of the UK's largest care home providers are owned or backed by private equity firms
Our social care system is broken because profit is being put before people. Record numbers of people going without the support they need, facing lengthy waits for assessments, receiving eye-watering bills or being left in unsuitable settings because the right care is simply not available. But for too long, there has been too little acceptance or political will to tackle the root causes of the issue. We now have a Prime Minister brave enough to face the challenge and, as we heard at Conference, build a system that prioritises people over profit.
I believe the future of social care depends on the choices we make about its ownership. Right now, power doesn’t sit with carers and care recipients, but in the hands of distant shareholders with little connection to the reality of the care system. Around 80 per cent of the UK's largest care home providers are owned or backed by private equity firms, which has led to excessive profit extraction and cost-cutting at the expense of care.
We can continue with this model in which private profit shapes the delivery of an essential public service, in blind hope that further funding and incremental reform would one day overcome its structural problems. But there is another way. We can proactively build a system that recognises care as a social good, with ownership and decision-making organised around the people that use it at its heart. This reform requires a shift in how we think about social care, away from a mindset where care is a commodity to be sold and bought. Instead, we should measure the success of our care sector by whether people are receiving the support they need, whether workers are valued and fairly treated, and whether communities have access to the services they need to thrive.
Co-operative social care offers a tangible route towards that alternative. Social care co‑operatives deliver adult social care services that are democratically owned and controlled by their members, rather than by private shareholders. That means the interests of the people at the heart of the service are always the focus. It’s a model we know works – care co-operatives and not-for-profit care has been successful across the country. Carers are paid for the entirety of their shift, not just hours of contact, they are listened to so the experiences of day-to-day care feeds into how the organisation works and the level of care they provide consistently outperforms that of the private sector.
At its core, it is a system focused on people, giving them the respect and dignity they deserve. Now, if co-operatives receive the support and political backing they so desperately need, they could become an important part of how our nation delivers care. A care system focused on improving services, paying carers fairly and providing the cared for with a decent quality of life.
Today, as a Labour and Co-operative MP, I asked the first Labour and Co-operative Prime Minister in our country's history if he agreed with me that co-operative values, principles and models should be central to the new National Care Service we build together. He confirmed that he shares those beliefs, and that a different way of thinking about and delivering care may be on the horizon.
If we are to finally achieve a system that truly prioritises people over profit, the co-operative and not-for-profit sector must be at its heart.
Jack Abbott is the Labour (Co-op) MP for Ipswich
