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In an interview with The Mirror, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the Tories ‘didn’t give a monkeys’ about social care – but fears Labour ‘don’t quite understand’ either
Keir Starmer must urgently grasp the scale of the UK’s care crisis before his Government sets out its first Budget, Sir Ed Davey says.
The Lib Dem leader said he is “frustrated and disappointed” that sorting out social care doesn’t seem to be a top priority for Labour. In an interview with The Mirror he said the Tories “didn’t give a monkeys” about the plight of carers – but fears the new Government “don’t quite understand”.
Sir Ed, who spoke movingly about caring for his 12-year-old son during the General Election campaign, urged the PM to draw up radical plans to improve carers’ pay. Without doing so, he warned, the NHS and the economy will continue to suffer.
Speaking ahead of the party’s conference in Brighton, the Lib Dem leader said: “I’m getting the sense from Labour that they don’t quite understand carers. We all knew the Tories didn’t give a monkey’s about carers, and they were clear, we got no traction with them at all.
“We kept raising carers over two years. I still hope that we can get more traction with the new Government, but carers were not mentioned in their manifesto and in the King’s Speech.”
He called on the PM to host a carers’ summit in Downing Street, speaking to sector leaders and those on the front line before Chancellor Rachel Reeves sets out her Budget on October 30. Sir Ed said there should be a higher minimum wage for carers to address the 131,000 vacancies the sector currently has.
“It’s so clear that if you want to reform the NHS, you need to fix social care,” he said. “Labour’s talked about a higher wage, but it’s not as high as I think it should be.
“Our proposal, backed by the evidence, is £2 an hour above the National Living Wage for carers, specifically for carers.” He said low pay in the sector means staff move to other jobs that don’t take the same emotional toll.
“I’ve talked to care workers who are the only ones who go in and see an elderly person. They become their friend, and when that person dies they suffer a bereavement, as a worker.
“It’s not just the hard work of actually doing all the personal care for someone, but it’s the emotional side. It’s a hard job.” Few MPs will know how important it is to get it right more than Sir Ed.
After speaking about his son John, who requires round-the-clock care, during the campaign, he’s been inundated with messages of support. “People say ‘Thank you. Please, please keep speaking up for us'”, he revealed.
The Lib Dem leader said he wants to provide “constructive” opposition, in contrast to the divisive approach the Tories are likely to adopt. He said it was “deceitful” of the Conservatives to make migration a central plank of their offer to voters, despite the UK being dependent on overseas workers to staff the care sector.
More than 78,000 care workers were given long term visas to come to the UK between 2022 and 2023. “What was extraordinary about the Conservative approach, so hypocritical, so illogical is they said they were going to get tough on it,” the Lib Dem chief said.
“And then they issued hundreds of thousands of visas.” He will go into this year’s conference in buoyant mood, leading a group of 72 MPs – up from just 11 in 2019.
Sir Ed joked that he’s already lining up stunts for the next General Election, having been bungee jumping, rafting and hurtling through the air on rollercoasters this summer.
“This was my eighth election and we spoke about liberal policy more than I can remember before because we captured people’s attention,” he said. Asked whether he was surprised by his party’s impressive return he said: “I mean, to be honest, if we had got 50, it would have been a historic, fantastic result.”
He chuckled as he reflected on the huge jump in MPs – the biggest figure in over a century. On what his priorities will be over the next Parliament, Sir Ed said: “We’re going to keep talking about the environment, nature, sewage. We’re going to take on the cost of living.
“The Winter Fuel Payment is a cost of living issue, right?” Scrapping tax breaks for banks, he said, would be a start.
“If you just take the tax for banks to what it was a decade ago, and you’ve got £4billion. And you can keep on with the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and people who really need it.
“So that’s what I mean when I talk about better opposition, it’s about how we go about the discussion and be putting alternatives. And I think that will be quite different from the Conservatives.”
