Tory grandee Ken Clarke urges Boris Johnson to confront Britain’s social care crisis after claiming his Government ‘doesn’t have a policy on the issue’
- The former chancellor said Prime Minister must set out ‘more details’ on his plan
- Manifesto set out plan, including £1b a year more funding for the next five years
- Mr Johnson guaranteed he will have long-term plan in place by the next election
- But Mr Clarke said he didn’t think Number 10 had ‘pressed the governing button’
- Mr Clarke lost Tory whip before he stood down as an MP at the general election
Tory grandee Ken Clarke has urged Boris Johnson to move quickly to confront the social care crisis after saying the Government doesn’t have a policy on the issue.
The former chancellor said the Prime Minister must set out ‘more details’ on his plan for running the country after securing an emphatic 80-seat majority.
The Tory manifesto set out a three-point plan for social care, including £1 billion a year more in funding for the next five years.
The former chancellor (pictured) said the Prime Minister must set out ‘more details’ on his plan for running the country after securing an emphatic 80-seat majority
It also proposed cross-party talks to propose a long-term solution and promised that, whatever solution was found, no one would be forced to sell their home to pay for care.
Outlining the policy, Mr Johnson gave voters a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that he will have a long-term plan in place by the next election.
But yesterday, Mr Clarke – who lost the Tory whip before he stood down as an MP at the general election – said he didn’t think Downing Street had ‘yet pressed the governing button’.
He suggested Mr Johnson should ‘shunt aside’ those advisers who were involved in the election campaign. This was seen as a swipe at his senior adviser, Dominic Cummings.
‘He’d better get on with it and shunt aside all these people who won the campaign for him, quite brilliantly, and get in some policy wonks, strengthen his Cabinet, have some ministers who can take through some things that will make a real difference,’ he told Radio 5 Live.
‘It needs more details… the excitement and adrenalin of the campaign is still there… I don’t get the impression that they’ve yet pressed the governing button.
Outlining the policy, Mr Johnson (pictured in Estonia on Saturday) gave voters a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that he will have a long-term plan in place by the next election
‘Governing the country is more than going round saying the 2020s are going to be a golden year and we’re going to be called Global Britain.
‘At the moment, we’ve got a stagnant, fragile economy and an angry, discontented population, particularly the white working class in the North and the North Midlands where I am, and it’s a very dangerous world out there.’
He added: ‘We don’t have any policy on social care which is the biggest single domestic problem facing us.’