Dear Andy,

Your speech launching your campaign in Makerfield made us hopeful.

You talked about your experience with your dad and being humbled by the amazing team who care for him. You said the system that surrounds them is broken, and that it exploits the people who hold it together. You’re right on every count.

Now that you’ve been elected to Parliament, you may soon find yourself in a position to make the difficult but necessary decisions needed to finally transform the social care system for the benefit of us all.

I’m supporting Care About Care – a grassroot movement backed by over 4,000 people who work in or draw on care services, or who want to see a stronger, fairer, better funded care system. Collectively, supporters have written to over 250 individual MPs to call on them to give social care the recognition it has been denied for more than two decades.

What you said about the care sector is the change we want to see, and the change we have been fighting for. We hope you’ll use your new platform to keep fighting for a social care system our nation can be proud of. Its contribution to people, communities, and the economy has been forgotten about for too long. 

You have the opportunity to change that.

Social care supports nearly 900,000 people to live fulfilling lives, on their terms. It contributes £78 billion to the economy – more than the entertainment and tourism sectors. It employs 1.6 million people, more than the NHS.

Investing in transforming social care should form the core of a ‘good growth’ strategy that recognises social care as essential national infrastructure and that this investment benefits communities in all parts of the country, especially those where more people rely on Council-funded services.

Care About Care is asking the Government – one you may soon lead – to act on three things to support the care sector today, while longer term reform plans are put in place:

• An immediate £625 a year pay rise for every care worker. By exempting care providers from the recent Employer National Insurance increase, the £1bn saving should then be ringfenced to boost care worker pay. This is an immediate and deliverable change that puts money in the pockets of care workers across the country and that doesn’t require waiting until the Fair Pay Agreement starts in 2028.

• A fair cost of care. Councils should fund care services based on an independently calculated cost of delivery, paid on time and in full by local councils – themselves properly funded by central government to do this. We need to end the practice of public bodies in effect encouraging illegal employment practices through the routine underfunding of care services.

• Investment in the local care providers who sit at the heart of their communities. Introducing a new ‘British Care Fund’ that offers infrastructure grants to the small, often family run, community-based providers who deliver most of Britain’s care (c. 80%) will mean more people can invest in modernising their services, driving up quality, and allowing them to continue serving their communities.

These are asks that can be delivered without waiting until the Casey Commission Phase One and Phase Two reports, or the decade of implementation that’s expected to follow them.

These changes put money into the pockets of millions of frontline workers, who then spend it in their local communities supporting their local high street and hospitality businesses. Investing in care service infrastructure grants means more money spent on the home-grown success story that is British-made social care technology platforms, or on construction services and related industries, all of which create jobs and economic growth across the UK.

These are circular investments, with Skills for Care research showing every £1 spent on the social care system delivers £2.40 of wider economic benefits. This is the ‘good growth’ the UK economy needs.

We need change to be delivered quickly to stabilise the sector – but also to show care workers, those drawing on care services, and the wider public that government can work for them. That their lives can get better. That when politicians promise change and offer hope, that we can believe they will deliver for us.

Your campaign has offered us hope but hope alone will not improve a system that has been repeatedly ignored. As you take your seat in Parliament once again, we trust you will never stop fighting ‘for us’.