McDonnell calls for the urgent nationalisation of care services

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has called for the urgent nationalisation of care services in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Throwing his weight behind growing cross-party calls to establish a national social care service, McDonnell believes that fixing Britain’s long-running crisis in social care should be a top priority of government as coronavirus exposes severe frailties in the system.

In his first significant intervention since stepping down as Shadow Chancellor earlier this year, McDonnell is expected to use a speech on 22 July to say that it is now ‘time to act decisively and create the caring services we need’, in the form of a ‘National Care and Support Service alongside the NHS’.

The head of NHS England, Sir Simon Stevens, has warned that plans to reform the social care sector need to be in place within a year amid intense pressure on the sector. This has added to the already growing pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who pledged to find a social care solution in his 2019 Conservative party election manifesto.

McDonnell is expected to say that nationalising the care sector would finish the task of the postwar Labour government, which created the NHS in 1948, in a speech to mark the 75th anniversary on Sunday of the Attlee government taking office.

The veteran Labour MP will make the speech to mark the launch of a new campaign vehicle, dubbed the ‘Claim the Future’ project, to set out a socialist vision for a post-coronavirus economy, as part of his work from the backbenches as a senior figure on the Labour left.