Wednesday 30 September 2009

Who cares?

I could spend the rest of the week trying to find out which bits of Gordon Brown's speech apply to Wales, which are England only, and which have already been announced and probably won't happen anyway.

Life is too short so I'll just look at one area for the moment - free personal care. This is what Gordon Brown said: "And so we will say in Labour's manifesto that social care for all is not a distant dream, that to provide security for pensioners for generations to come - we will bring together the National Health Service and local care provision into a new National Care Service."

"And we can start straight away......and so for those with the highest needs we will now offer in their own homes free personal care."

Synidau has looked into how this might work in some detail.

Good news? That may depend on where you live. Peter Hain told Wales Today viewers that the National Care Service would be UK-wide. So that means, one day, more cash to do similar things in Wales.

What about the PM's promise to "start straight away?" This promise will apparently be paid for in part by cutting lower-priority areas of the existing (English) Department of Health budget. So if the Assembly Government hopes for a swift windfall from the plan, Ministers in Cardiff shouldn't hold their breath.

And the "National Care Service" itself depends on Labour winning the next election, which, shall we say, does not exactly look like a racing cert.

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