BBC Radio 4 Today interview with Nick Robinson: social care, the triple lock and Brexit

Thank you, Nick.

Well, it's a good question. I made that comment when I was talking about the removal of VAT off people's electricity bills on Thursday, what we will do to cut bus fares across England for the whole of 2027. So, those are moves that will help people in the short term, but I don't think Britain can be fixed in the short term. I have made the argument that we've been on the wrong path for a long time. We broke up the essentials, we sold them off.

People in this country are paying higher prices for transport, for energy, for housing than they are in other countries. And it will take time to fix those services and to get them under stronger public control, and therefore, as I did with the bus services in Greater Manchester, use that public control to bring public benefit in the form of lower fares and lower bills. So, that can't be done overnight, nor can social care be fixed overnight, hence a 10-year plan for Britain coming later this year.

This is about helping pensioners. Pensioners currently are at risk of paying ruinous care costs, and I know this, and my family has got very direct experience of the social care system. You can be somebody with a basic state pension and a little modest extra income and you can then be means tested and have to pay care costs. So, sometimes people just look at the money without looking at the wider support we give older people. And I believe we've got to look at that bigger picture.

It cannot be right going forward from here that we treat dementia very differently from cancer. This uh affects so many families. We need a system that in my view works to NHS principles. And if we did that, it would be to support pensioners in a more enhanced way than we are currently doing. At the moment, you could

not quite right. So, uh I've said that we will make an adjustment to the triple lock. Now, you might say that sounds like uh clever politician speak. But let me just explain

that. Uh but if I could just explain, it keeps the three elements in play. So, those three elements being prices, earnings, and 2.5%. And the current triple lock works on the basis every year, which is highest, that's what the pension goes up by. And what that is doing is it's taking it up quite quickly.

And by 2030, it will be at a record level. The adjustment that I'm suggesting is that earnings uh should be considered over a longer time frame, over the years, not every year. And then that would maintain the pension, but it wouldn't put us in the position that the triple lock has us in at this moment of time. I will honor it for this Parliament, for sure. And it's been a really important uh way of making sure the state pension reflects and is in touch with the rising prosperity that we have in the the wider country.

Well, pensioners are paying, as I say, huge care costs and I think it's a very big move to support older people to say, "You will have peace of mind in your later life.

It's it's a first big move to enable the introduction of a national care service. It's a very significant decision. Every predecessor in the role that I am in has not grasped this nettle. I am ripping the plaster off. I am going to fix social care.

I will not leave office without doing it. And yes, you are absolutely right to ask about older people, but they will get peace of mind and more ability to protect their homes and savings in the system that I'm that I'm describing.

You will.

They could be even more than that. You will um you will have to pay for your bed and board and that is going to be the case. Uh it's the case in Scotland or other countries that have gone down this path. Um it's the care that we are talking about. But here's the point, Nick.

I think if we had a proper preventative social care service in this country that was operated on a whole person basis, we would have much higher standard of social care in people's homes. The reason why my dad had to go into a care home, since you asked about it, is because the threadbare social care system we have, which operates in 15-minute windows, uh delivering quite a basic level of care, could not cope when my dad's care needs progressed. And my mom then couldn't cope with the chaos that was happening around those 15-minute care visits. So, that's the honest answer as to why that system doesn't work. If you do what I want to do, which is provide much higher standard whole person care in people's homes, genuinely, I think you could do what most families would want to do, which is to keep people in their own home for all of their lives.

This is an energy crisis, and because the war with Iran is going on, and we don't know when it will end, it's an energy crisis we've all got to prepare to live with for potentially many months. I don't think that is an overstatement, to be honest. Um when I look at the prices at the pump at this moment in time, if we include uh diesel and petrol within that, this is uh very challenging, isn't it, for people who are filling up today? Um when we look at um energy prices in the home, difficult, too. As I said, I'm doing what I can, uh reducing well, moving, I should say, VAT off bills, but it is very difficult indeed, and it's why the Middle East situation needs to command a lot of our attention.

I met the President of the United States last week. We spoke about this situation. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is an an urgent international priority. We've got to work at all of these things. The reason, the main driver of that crisis is beyond our control, but we can can contribute uh to um to solving that situation, and that is what I've been doing as Prime Minister.

I agree that it's not uh going to meet all of those pressures, but it is something. It's better to have done it uh than not to have done it. I could have come in in July and said, "Wait till the budget," but I didn't. I acted, and therefore the money uh is freed up from Thursday. People will see VAT come off their bills then.

And obviously, we have a budget coming, and we're considering all of these issues. People can see that there isn't uh huge room for maneuver within the public finances, and we won't take risks uh with people's mortgages, like a previous Prime Minister and government did.

We're looking at any measure that can give people breathing space, that can take the pressure off. And might I just say as well, uh Nick, alongside that, cost of living is one thing, but the cost of business, the cost of running a business, is another, and we're looking at that issue as well.

Well, I did, and I will come back to that if it's okay. But let me deal with firstly the question as to why Britain has a particular higher level of exposure. And if you look at the lines on the graph, you will see that it does come from that mini budget of a few years ago. Britain lost some trust and credibility in markets at that moment in time, and we haven't yet repaired fully that damage, and we have to work at to repair it. Uh but I did address that question today.

I took a big decision about the triple lock, which shows I am prepared to take those type of decisions.

Well, I

Well, if I could develop the argument, because I did say this as well, that what I've done by laying out my plans for public control of energy, water, housing, and social care, that is a way of getting our long-term costs down. If you have the biggest council house building program of a generation, you will bring down housing benefit within the decade. If you take a different approach to supporting young people into work as we expect Alan Milburn to recommend, you will have a way of unlocking money from out-of-work benefits. If you do reform social care and have preventative simple good care in people's homes, you will save billions from an NHS that currently receives people on 999 calls from domiciliary care or care homes and has them spending weeks on end unnecessarily in hospital. So, this is actually a thought-through and quite responsible way of reducing revenue spending in the long run.

Well, I think uh judge me on what I've done so far. So, I inherited a defense investment plan that wasn't fully funded, but it will be fully funded and we'll set that out very clearly at the budget. So, I've already been working uh to find funding for defense. And what I've just said a moment ago around the 10-year plan for Britain, the whole drive is to start investing in success rather than paying for failure as the country does excessively at this moment in time. Too many people on out-of-work benefits in their 20s.

Too many people in hospital unnecessarily. And here's a key one. The benefit system chasing rents in the private rented sector because we don't have enough homes in the public housing stock. So, fixing these things is a prudent way to get revenue spending down in the long run.

I want to look at the options and I am serious.

I have said in that you know there's no point me denying it. I've said in a book uh I would like to see Britain rejoin in my lifetime. So, there's no point me saying otherwise, but it's not necessarily the case that that is now because we need to understand what would be the nature of how we would look at the different options. So, we could stay as we are. That's definitely an option if people think this is the right place to stay.

We could look at what George Osborne has said about a customs union. We could look at what the Liberal Democrats said at their conference about single market, or we could go all the way. So, there are clearly options that need to be uh considered and we have to look at what is doable um and what would be the pros and cons of each. What I am saying is it's not good enough to leave that question just hanging. You know, I am saying let's be clear about where we want Britain to go in the next decade.

And I've asked people to join with me on that. The country cannot have a decade, another one, like the one we've just had where we have had too much drift, too much division. I am very clear and I will say this bluntly, Brexit has caused more harm than good. And I think around 60% of the British public agree with that statement. So, the question is what do we do about that?

And I'm not doing the usual politician thing. I'm being honest about facing up to that and give people options that they can look at and judge.

I found it better being elected under a different system as mayor of Greater Manchester where people had one or two, they could put that on the ballot paper cuz you had a reason to stop on every doorstep and chat to people who might not always support your party and try and get their second preference. It just led to a better politics. And I also feel that in an era of five-party politics, can we really watch a party with less than 30% just walk into Downing Street? Is that something we should feel comfortable about?

No, it could happen with any political party. It's whether that would be a legitimate government. But, you know, more broadly, if I can make a more serious point, Nick, we've had a decade of turbulence in our politics, and I think that has stopped Britain moving forward. And if we look to the next decade, I think we need to show the markets and the world and everybody that we can have a better politics, more about problem-solving than point-scoring, which sadly is too much what our politics is about. And that would come, I think, if we had a different approach to the voting system.

So, I believe part of Britain building back from where we are now is getting rid of the turbulence, putting down a stronger platform that gives people more certainty to invest in this country through the reform of our politics. And probably it's the five-party reality that we're in now that brings that issue forward.

Well, where does the energy crisis come from? I would say it has its roots in the 1980s when it was broken up and sold off. Look at water. So, that's a big concern of your listeners, is it not? So, where are the roots of the failing water system that we've got where we're seeing sewage in the rivers and the seas, people paying high bills?

You know, where does that come from? That failure to invest in the infrastructure over all of those years. Why have we got a housing crisis? We saw a housing public housing stock shrink. And it's why, as I said before, we're chasing rents in the private rented sector through the benefit system.

So, you do have to go back, and that's what I did today. The country built the Commonwealth in the post-war period from '45 to the mid-'80s, but we did make a change in that period. And I don't believe it's been a good change cuz we lost control of too much. We left people too exposed to energy costs, uh to high housing costs. And that's what I was talking about today.

Sometimes you have to see the sweep of history and how things uh need to the pendulum needs to come back, and that's what I was arguing for today.

He wouldn't probably have said that, if I'm honest, cuz he was somebody was very much about remember where you've come from, remember what we're about, and stay true to what we're about. The city, this place where we are. He was a proud son of it, but he was always saying, "Remember your roots, where we've come from." And it's why I spoke about, you know, that statement made about me being the last Prime Minister of the UK on the day he died. And I decided to lean into it.

I wasn't blaming him, by the way, cuz he didn't know the news at the time. But, I quoted it because it really stuck with me and made me really determined to say, "What am I about and what has my dad instilled in me?" And what my dad instilled in me was a quiet patriotism, the best of this country. When we work together and build things from the bottom up, that working class aspiration that I spoke about, which he very much embodied in his life. You know, the way in which this country built uh trade unions, the cooperative movement. We are a union itself of countries, and obviously he supported our membership of the European Union.

His was a quiet patriotism that was very much rooted uh in this part of the world. And it was an opportunity for me to speak to that because I want to lead a country that builds the kind of Britain my dad always wanted to see. It is partly that that country. It is brilliant in so many ways, but it could be better. And I laid out today at the conference how I would like it to be better going forward.

I do.

It has at times. You know, the two things coincided, the start of my journey as Prime Minister and the end of my dad's journey. And I did know that at the time because the last time I'd seen him before walking up Downing Street, you just know. When you know, you you know. And I knew those two things were coming together.

And it explains why we were in a bit of a family huddle on Downing Street when I when I came in that day. And I've had to think about it. I don't want to use it in any way for sympathy or anything like that. But I actually want to use it to give me purpose in this job. What am I trying to do?

What Britain am I trying to create here? And as I say, it was the one that has allowed the son of a man who failed his 11 plus to be the Prime Minister. The big reason why that's happened is because this country was a country of social aspiration. It did allow people from this part of the world to move forward and come to the place where I am. And that's the Britain I believe in and will passionately defend with everything that I've got and hopefully push forward into the future.

I'm not talking about thinking backwards. I want to set Britain up for the future. But in this world that we're in with all of these threats, we need to be more resilient in our communities. We need to be able to afford everyday services. We need good homes.

And from that social security, you can build national security at the at the higher level. That's what I want to do as Prime Minister and I'm rooting it today in everything that I where I've come from, what my dad was about, and and hopefully now I've given account to the public of who I am, where I've come from, and what I'm trying to do.