Free care for all was never going to work

Alan Walker is right to condemn the “low priority given to social care compared with healthcare” (Letters, 14 August). And yet he praises as “brilliant” the job done by the Sutherland royal commission.
The Sutherland commission was a disaster for social care. It wanted huge sums spent on providing care free for the better off, without tackling the real problem as set out in its minority report, which I penned: wholly inadequate spending on the provision of social care, and in particular on the systemic underpayment of our wonderful social care workers.
The result has been 25 years of public haggling between the free-care-for-all gang, wanting the social care budget to be lavished on subsidising the rich and their inheritances, and those who, like the minority report, would like to concentrate on better care especially for the less well-off.
The brave announcement by the new government that it has ditched the Tories’ proposals should end that futile debate. We can then get on with designing a social care system which provides adequate support for everyone.David LipseyLabour, House of Lords