Burnham backs new 'death tax' to fund social care within hours of taking power saying his father's Alzheimer's experience shows system is 'broken'

By DAVID WILCOCK, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 16:00, 20 July 2026 | Updated: 16:12, 20 July 2026 Andy Burnham signalled he is ready to hit middle class families with a new 'death tax' to fund adult social care today, just hours after taking power. The new Prime Minister said he was ready to risk his reputation with voters by making an overhaul of the 'broken' system a centrepiece of his premiership after replacing Sir Keir Starmer. He told reporters he had worked out '15 years ago' how to pay for it, a reference to his 2010 plan to create a £3.6billion national care service, funded by a 10 per cent tax on estates. The proposal, made when he was Gordon Brown's health secretary, was thrown out after the Conservatives labelled the contribution a 'death tax'. But speaking after he arrived in No10 with a vow to take Labour further to the Left Mr Burnham said that it was a 'damning' indictment of his generation of politicians that care was still a mess. 'I am ready to use some of my political capital on this issue. I'll be blunt with you,' he said.  'I would not want to leave office having done what Westminster has done ... it's not defensible. How many people have lost their homes and their savings in that time? We need to face it and fix it.' Unlike NHS care, social care is not free at the point of use and people with savings worth more than £23,250 are not entitled to help with the cost of care from their local council. High care costs sometimes mean people are forced to sell their homes to pay for what they need. Mr Burnham also referenced the care received by his father Roy, whose Alzheimer's has advanced to a stage where he does not know his son has become Prime Minister.  The new Prime Minister said he was ready to risk his reputation with voters by making an overhaul of the 'broken' system a centerpiece of his premiership after replacing Sir Keir Starmer. Mr Burnham also referenced the care received by his father Roy, whose Alzheimer's has advanced to a stage where he does not know his son has become Prime Minister. 'If I look at the National Health Service right now, what I hear from people is that corridor care is becoming the norm all year round, not just in winter time, and the standards in relation to A&E are just not achievable in terms of the 90-plus percent of people coming through in four hours,' he went on. ‘And they say the biggest cause of that is broken social care because if there's no barrier there at the front, how on Earth can the hospital system cope? 'And I know this from my dad, who has Alzheimer's. I know how the system at the front end often wants to ring 999 and, you know, send somebody in, but it isn't in their interests or in the system's interest. So, you just need to look at this in a quite fundamental way.' How adult social care works and is funded in England has been a thorny issue for many governments over the years.  Baroness Louise Casey, who is leading an independent review into the sector and is expected to publish her first report later this year, noted in a speech earlier this month that there have been no fewer than 22 attempts since 1997 at reforming the sector – none of which she said had 'fixed the foundations'. Mr Burnham has consistently backed a new tax to pay for adult social care since he first looked at the issue 15 years ago, suggesting it could replace inheritance tax. In May he said: ‘I know there’s a great resentment about inheritance tax, so actually just, you know, take that away, perhaps, and look at a care levy.  'It’s not about asking people to pay more, it’s just people paying in the most unfair way possible at this moment in time and I think there’s a much better way of doing it, and people just have peace of mind while they’re alive, because they get the care that they need, and then it will be dealt with in a much better way.’  In a separate interview ahead of his appointment Mr Burnham said his family had been to see Roy in his care home last weekend. 'That's a sadness because he would be [proud],' Mr Burnham said. 'The way I look at it, it's his achievement as well. A whole family achievement, although he doesn't know it.' In 2019, in his first speech as prime minister, Boris Johnson said the Conservatives would 'fix the crisis in social care once and for all', something that failed to come to fruition. Labour faced criticism after the party was elected in 2024 for scrapping plans for an £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England would need to spend on their personal care over their lifetime, having argued the proposals were not 'deliverable' in the time frame.