Events | 2010.02.12
Mandelson attacks Cameron over care talks collapse
Business secretary claims Tory leader wrecked attempts to get consensus because he wanted to exploit issue for political advantage
Lord Mandelson triggered a fierce row today when he accused David Cameron of "contemptible behaviour" over the future of social care.
The business secretary claimed that Cameron wrecked attempts to got a cross-party consensus in this area because the Tories wanted to exploit the issue for political advantage.
Tory sources hit back, saying that Mandelson\'s remarks were just a "ludicrous attempt to distract attention from Labour\'s plans for a £20,000 death tax".
Mandelson made his comments even though the shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said in an interview this morning that Cameron had not told him to abandon the talks.
Lansley confirmed he had entered secret talks with his Labour and Liberal Democrat opposite numbers without telling Cameron.
But he said the discussions had collapsed not because of Cameron\'s intervention but because it was impossible to reach agreement.
In December, Lansley, Andy Burnham, the health secretary, and Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, opened talks in an attempt to reach an agreement on the future of social care.
The initiative collapsed this week after the Tories launched a high-profile campaign attacking Labour\'s plans for social care and accusing Gordon Brown of planning to levy a £20,000 tax on estates to fund a national care service.
Lansley – who irritated the Tory leadership last year with an interview in which he talked frankly about the party\'s plans for spending cuts – told this morning\'s BBC Radio 4 Today programme he had initiated the talks with Burnham and Lamb.
But he said there was no agreement that the parties should not be free to criticise each other\'s policies, adding that on Tuesday, when the Guardian carried a report suggesting that Burnham favoured a £20,000 levy , the Tories needed to attack that.
Lansley said that a compulsory levy on all estates would be unfair because it would penalise those who decided to look after their elderly relatives themselves instead of sending them to a care home.
He also said £20,000 would be a "very significant sum" for people hoping to inherit money from the estate of a parent.
Burnham told a news conference on Tuesday that he did not favour a flat-rate levy and was still considering his options. But he has not ruled out a compulsory levy set at a variable rate based on ability to pay.
Asked whether Cameron had given permission for the secret talks to go ahead, Lansley said: "We had the talks. After we had the talks, I told David Cameron about them ... He said: \'That\'s fine.\'"
Asked if Cameron had encouraged him to go on, Lansley replied: "No. It\'s entirely up to me. I\'m in charge of this issue.
"What I had done was initiate a discussion because the personal care at home bill the government was proceeding with was completely at odds with the wider structure of social care reform."
Lansley said it was "not true" that Cameron had ordered him to stop the talks – but that did not stop Mandelson, a few hours later, from blaming the Tory leader for the negotiations breaking down.
He issued a statement that said: "While the shadow health secretary was prepared to talk about the options on elderly care that we need for the future, David Cameron could think only of political advantage.
"Clearly, David Cameron drove a wrecking ball through the consensus on care – not to help the older people of this country but to indulge in playground politics. It is cynical, short-sighted and contemptible behaviour."
A Tory source said: "The fact that the prince of spin is making these comments says it all. Mandelson is just putting up a smokescreen to distract attention from the fact that Labour is going to charge people £20,000 when they die."
Earlier, Lamb told Today that, following his secret talks with Lansley and Burnham in the weeks around the new year, he had drafted a joint statement of "clearly shared principles" to form the basis for a one-year process of finding consensus on much-needed reform.
"The two other party representatives supported it," Lamb said. "I think it\'s a great pity that it has collapsed in acrimony this week.
"We have got a wholly inadequate bill from the government which hasn\'t been properly costed, and we have got pretty shabby campaigning by the Conservatives."
Lamb said that, beneath the public scrapping, the parties were in agreement about some of the most important principles involved.
"The need for comprehensive reform of this system is overwhelming," he added. "We have got a system in crisis.
"Many elderly people don\'t get the care they need and people think that the funding of it is unfair. There was a shared view that we should be trying to see what we agreed and what the areas were which were still to be resolved."
At meetings before Christmas and early in the new year, Lamb, Burnham and Lansley thrashed out the areas of agreement and disagreement, and the Labour and Tory spokesmen then submitted their ideas to him so he could draft the joint paper setting out shared principles, Lamb said.
These areas included: the importance of preventative healthcare; being able to take a package of care around the country, no matter where you chose to live; involving and recognising the role and needs of carers, and trying to give individuals as much freedom as possible in deciding how money devoted to their care should be spent.
"These are clear shared principles," Lamb said. "My view is that we should set up a process now that commits every party to it and involves the public and interested bodies with a specific objective of trying to achieve agreement within a year.
"Surely this is what the public are crying out for. We should be supporting efforts for politicians of different parties to work together when there are issues of this significance that need to be resolved."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/12/cameron-social-care-lansley
