Investing in care: a missed opportunity
Working from home has pretty much been the norm for colleagues working in the communications industry. While we’re all familiar with its perils and pitfalls – your Wi-Fi dropping out mid-sentence on a call, or a lengthy construction project next door – it has given many of us the positive opportunity to learn more about our colleagues and the people they care for. Our homelives are more visible, and that has meant that conversations around caring responsibilities are more frequent, open, and honest. This honesty feels like a positive step forward; it has helped show how important care provision is for keeping the wheels of our economy in motion.
A lack of recognition
It is unfortunate that the Budget last week did not show that same awareness that has been building throughout the pandemic. While we had a raft of measures intended to encourage consumer spending as the economy opens up, there was a notable lack of long-term policy design focusing on how we rebuild our economy and what we want our society to look like. Keir Starmer was right to highlight the Chancellor’s lack of ambition in his response to the budget, with fundamental questions still looming large on unemployment, the NHS and adult social care.
Physical vs social infrastructure
One of the better examples of long-term policy design that the Chancellor updated the House on last Wednesday was details of a UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB). Its aim to partner with the private sector and local government to increase infrastructure investment that helps tackle climate change and promotes economic growth across the UK has been received as a positive, but limited step.
Concerns have been raised over whether the £12bn of public funding and a further £10bn in government guarantees will be transformative in the quest to level up the UK, or whether UKIB will do its intended job of helping the UK in the race to net zero. However, a more fundamental question that should be asked is on the government’s priorities; are we investing into physical infrastructure and ‘shovel-ready’ projects at the expense of public services that urgently need support? Can we really ‘build back better’ as a society if we fail to invest in our social care system, or aren’t able to give nurses more than a 1% pay rise?
Why invest in care
There is an immediate need for investment in a social infrastructure. The pressures on the social care system have left 1.5 million adults with unmet care needs, many early years and childcare providers are being forced to close, and departmental spending will be £4 billion lower in 2021/22 than pre-pandemic levels. The Budget stayed silent on many of these critical issues that are in urgent need of investment.
Investing in the more caring elements of our society is not only right thing to do in terms of prioritising immediate need, but it also makes good economic sense. As the Women’s Budget Group (WBG) outlines, childcare is a vital form of infrastructure, enabling parents to enter or stay in employment. When parents are able to work, they are more likely to be putting money back into the economy through consumer spending. Likewise, Research by WBG has shown that investment in the care sector could create 2.7 times as many jobs as investment in construction and contribute to a low-carbon recovery. When the country is both plotting a path to job creation and a greener society, investing in creating more well-paid, sustainable care jobs seems like a good bet alongside traditional infrastructure investment.
A caring state and enterprising business sector
Investing in care is a good example of a “new partnership” that a Labour government would forge with business that tackles inequality, builds a secure economy and invests in the future. An expanded care sector would need new premises; childcare facilities and community care centres could help to revive the high street and we could see a demand for investment in senior and assisted living facilities.
As Keir Starmer outlined in his A New Chapter for Britain speech, a partnership between an active, caring state and an enterprising business sector would be a powerful combination that has the potential to rebuild the foundations of our economy for the better.
Josie Betts
FTI Consulting