12 - The Conservatives and adult social care

Summary

Introduction

As set out throughout this book, it can be difficult to locate recent Conservative governments, not least because of stark differences between stated aims and subsequent realities. There have also been a series of unprecedented international events, which might have caught any government by surprise. Faced with these challenges, the Conservatives’ approach has largely been one of inaction: failing to address the very significant impacts of austerity and underdelivering on promises to reform long-term care funding. However, such inaction spans a number of governments: since the late 1990s there have been at least 12 adult social care White or Green Papers, reviews and strategy documents, with none of the funding proposals actually being implemented. While the latest version of these proposed reforms made it onto the statute books, it has since been delayed yet again (perhaps indefinitely), and it was in any case a pale imitation of the measures that were going to be introduced in 2014.

After summarising the legacy of the Coalition government (2010– 15), this chapter turns to events under Conservative governments since 2015. Throughout, the approach includes an unusual mix of elements of traditional Conservative ideology, a pragmatic recognition of the difficulties of genuinely trying to resolve some of the very thorny issues at stake and some slightly odd twists and turns en route. In the early 2020s, there is no doubt that adult social care faces even more challenges than in 2010, with recent policy overpromising and underdelivering. While similar underlying themes may well exist across all four nations of the UK, the details in this chapter focus on England.

The Coalition government, 2010– 15

In Bochel and Powell's (2016) edited collection, Glasby (2016) reviewed the Coalition's journey from ‘initial neglect to the Care Act 2014’. While social care hardly featured in the 2010 Conservative manifesto or the Coalition's Programme for Government (Cabinet Office, 2010; Conservative Party, 2010), a series of Liberal Democrat care services ministers developed and implemented the Care Act 2014.