In a tense Good Morning Britain moment, Kate Garraway confronted Wes Streeting about the price of care on the one-year anniversary of her husband Derek Draper’s death
Kate Garraway confronts Wes Streeting about Derek’s death and care costs
Kate Garraway has told the Health Secretary the cost of care was one of the “overriding” challenges for her family during the illness of her late husband Derek Draper.
In a tense exchange on Good Morning Britain, the presenter told Wes Streeting it was the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death today and that she was “thinking about the situation with Derek” as he laid out his plans to overhaul the care system.
Kate confronted Mr Streeting after he today announced an independent probe into social care, to pave the way for the “National Care Service” that Labour promised in its manifesto. The review with start in April but is not due to finish until 2028 – leaving families who are currently struggling with care costs with little hope.
Derek passed away last year aged 56 after extreme complications from Covid. Kate confronted the Cabinet minister about the huge challenge of “dealing with the funding of care”. She said she was lucky she has a well-paid job to pay for the care but admitted she has “excessive unpayable debt” now. She said she feared for others out there and urged him to think about the urgency of the issue after he announced the review into the care system will take years.
Kate told Mr Streeting: “I’m going to be honest. In my mind, I’m thinking about the situation with Derek. It actually happens to be the anniversary of his death – one-year anniversary of his death – today, which is a day only relevant to me, but over the last few weeks, the family and I have been talking about the challenges we faced this time last year.
“And one of the overriding ones until he went back into intensive care before he passed away, was dealing with the funding of care. At the time of his death, there were two appeals that hadn’t been heard for funding. It kept on getting pushed back and pushed back. In the meantime, and I’m lucky I’ve got an incredible job which is well-paid, I was having to fund the situation. Now I’ve got excessive unpayable debt because of it, and if I’m in that position, what else are people going to be? People can’t afford four more years of this?”
Mr Streeting began to respond: “Firstly, Kate and I know lots of viewers will feel the same having followed – I think that’s why the anniversary you’re going through yourself and your family, which all of us are with you with totally heart…” Kate then interrupted to add: “I know you feel it too – I only mention it because I’m aware that there are people that are in the situation that just don’t have that time.”
The Health Secretary then continued: “Yeah, I was going to say, Kate, I think that’s why your story connected with so many people. It’s not just that you’re a familiar face on people’s screens and your viewers feel they’ve got relationship with you as a presenter, it’s also because your experience with Derek and your family’s experience resonates with so many people across the country who are struggling with the same costs or the same unmet needs or similar experiences.
“And I think one of the reasons why we’ve ended always back into this sort of the short-termist cycle of failure, is whenever we talk about social care, there are costs involved, and that sort of makes people run for the hills and want to stick their head in the sand in politics, because sometimes those numbers can be scary.
“And one of the reasons I genuinely think, even with the majority of the size that we’ve got, it’s a good thing to try and build cross-party consensus is I want to come up with a plan that means whoever’s in government after the next general election or the one after that, whether it’s a Labour government or a Conservative government or a coalition or whoever that, broadly speaking, we keep the same direction of travel on social care in the way that we have with the NHS since 1948.”