UK's Burnham vows cross-party push to end "unfair" social care costs amid tax rise debate
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged on Wednesday to overhaul England’s adult social care system, saying he wanted to work with other parties to end unfair high costs for users that he likened to US healthcare. Burnham did not rule out tax rises to fund a new scheme as part of efforts to overhaul Britain’s social care system.
Successive governments have failed to reform adult social care, for which families can pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, after previous proposals were defeated by opposition parties who dubbed them a “dementia tax” or “death tax”. Burnham did not rule out tax rises to fund a new scheme and said that “scare stories” from newspaper headlines would not deter him from tackling a situation that will only get worse as the population ages.
“It’s a major dereliction of public duty that parliament has not faced up to this,” he told an audience at a care home in north London. Asked if he could transform social care without raising taxes, he said that more was possible within existing resources, but some of the plans “will require difficult decisions”.
In Estonia, Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta is proposing to replace bankruptcy trustees with civil servants or to cover trustee fees from the state budget in certain proceedings. The state's Insolvency Service said the idea is worthwhile, and one way to fund it could be an insolvency tax. The Ministry of Justice said Estonia's insolvency system is not sustainable in its current form.
“No one pays the trustee from the state budget or from creditors' pockets when there are no assets. If a deposit is paid, bankruptcy is declared, but if it is not paid, then it is not declared because there simply is no property,” said Andres Hermet from Estonian Chamber of Enforcement Agents and Trustees in Bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, in Portugal, the parliamentary group of the PS in the Assembly of the Republic questioned this Wednesday the Minister of Culture about the alteration of the use of the old cinema rooms of the La Vie shopping center, in Guarda, allegedly before the necessary legal and administrative procedure was concluded.
“The closure or descaracterization of cultural equipment of this nature does not represent only a change in the use of a commercial space. It also has relevant consequences for access to culture, for territorial cohesion and for the preservation of proximity cultural equipment, particularly in interior territories,” considered deputy Aida Carvalho, in a statement sent to the Lusa agency.
The Ministry of Justice in Estonia said that if civil servants handled bankruptcy proceedings, it would mean additional costs for the state budget. Under this solution, civil servants would need salaries, and there would be IT development, space and support service costs, training costs and transition costs. The ministry said the state's workload would increase significantly.
The ministry did not specify how much the possible solution would cost the state. It noted that the budget impact could be significant. Hermet said such additional state funding is a good idea, because no one would refuse money if the state wants to invest in the field. But he did not agree with the ministry's assessment that the insolvency system is collapsing. He said new recruits are needed because entering the profession is difficult for people who have never been trustees, and trustee fees are completely unpredictable.
In the UK, Burnham's pledge to fix England's unfair adult care system was met with interest. The prime minister said he wanted to work with other parties to better fund a service where costs for users had become as unfair as those for U.S. healthcare. Successive governments have failed to reform adult social care, for which families can pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, after previous proposals were defeated by opposition parties who dubbed them a “dementia tax” or “death tax”.
Burnham did not rule out tax rises to fund a new scheme and said that “scare stories” from newspaper headlines would not deter him from tackling a situation that will only get worse as the population ages. “It’s a major dereliction of public duty that parliament has not faced up to this,” he told an audience at a care home in north London. Asked if he could transform social care without raising taxes, he said that more was possible within existing resources, but some of the plans “will require difficult decisions”.
In Portugal, the parliamentary group of the PS in the Assembly of the Republic questioned this Wednesday the Minister of Culture about the alteration of the use of the old cinema rooms of the La Vie shopping center, in Guarda, allegedly before the necessary legal and administrative procedure was concluded. The PS is concerned about the impact on cultural access and the legal procedures followed.
“The closure or descaracterization of cultural equipment of this nature does not represent only a change in the use of a commercial space. It also has relevant consequences for access to culture, for territorial cohesion and for the preservation of proximity cultural equipment, particularly in interior territories,” considered deputy Aida Carvalho, in a statement sent to the Lusa agency.
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UKs PM Burnham vows to fix Britains unfair adult care system British Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged on Wednesday to take difficult decisions to overhaul Englands adult social care system, saying he wanted to work with other parties to end unfair high costs for users that he likened to US healthcare. Successive governments have failed to reform adult social care, for which families can pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, after previous proposals were defeated by opposition parties who dubbed them a dementia tax or death tax. Burnham did not...
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