ANDY BURNHAM was urged today to prove to keep his vow to abandon 40 years of neoliberalism by legislating for a national care service before the end of this parliament.

Health experts, campaigners and unions called on the Prime Minister to prioritise radical reforms of adult social care after he declined to put a timeline on his plans.

In his first major interview since he walked into No 10, Mr Burnham said that system change “takes time” but insisted he will expend “whatever political capital I have” on fixing a problem which has long been a thorny one for previous governments.

He told the BBC: “I would not want to leave office without having brought in the substantial change, the new system of social care that you describe.

“If we don’t do it, the NHS will collapse under the weight of trying to care for people who’ve not really needed to end up in the NHS system.”

Unlike NHS care, social care is not free at the point of use, and high costs sometimes mean people are forced to sell their homes to pay for what they need.

People with savings worth more than £23,250 are not entitled to help with the cost of care from their local council.

The PM is expected to make an intervention on social care in the coming days having set out plans for the creation of a national care service for England while he was health secretary in Gordon Brown’s administration.

As polling showed Labour overtaking Reform for the first time since March 2025, health charities called on him to use his Commons majority to introduce a new system before the end of the parliament.

Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Dr John Puntis told the Morning Star: “If Burnham is sincere about abandoning 40 years of neoliberalism, grasping the issue of social care by creating a national care, support and independent living service is something of a litmus test. 

“This should be publicly provided and accountable, funded like the NHS from progressive taxation and with the values of decency, security, justice and compassion at its heart. 

“Services must be designed together with service users and address the needs of the many unpaid carers. 

“Close working with the NHS could end delayed discharge from hospital and the 16,000 annual deaths from delayed admission.”

Unison general secretary Andrea Egan urged Mr Burnham to fund the sector’s Fair Pay Agreement “properly, because £500 million isn’t enough to fix a multi-billion-pound problem.”

This should provide the stepping stone for an “ambitious National Care Service, with national standards at its core” as having England’s current social care system mostly delivered by private companies has seen it “run down by huge funding cuts and profit extraction.”

Royal College of Nursing general secretary Nicola Ranger said: “One of the key issues that urgently needs to be fixed is funding reform, including how funding for social care is accessed.

“Patients frequently spend long periods of time waiting to be discharged because the funding required to move them elsewhere cannot be obtained, despite there being the capacity to take them in social care.”

We Own It director Cat Hobbs urged PM to tackle “the desperately important issue of who owns and runs social care. 

“Privatisation has been a massive failure — we’re paying more for worse care while private equity sharks walk away with huge profit margins.”

Baroness Louise Casey is leading a review into the adult social care system and has previously confirmed she will launch what she has described as a “challenging” conversation with the country – asking who should get social care, what people should pay, and what role the state should play to inform the major review.

Mr Burnham also said that his government is facing “big decisions” about council tax, as he criticised the unfairness of the current system where some people outside London pay higher rates than those living in the most expensive homes in the capital.

He acknowledged he needed to stick to the manifesto Labour was elected on in 2024 but said he understood how people felt the current system was disproportionate.

It came as No 10 denied the government was considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a tax based on property or land values.