Adam Smith Institute

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A coherent economic policy is a useful thing Mr. Corbyn

We thus suggest you take the time to acquire one:

A Labour government will take failing care homes into public ownership to protect social care provision, Jeremy Corbyn is to promise.

The Labour leader will warn the social care system is at "serious risk of breakdown" unless the Government invests more money.

OK, maybe there is a problem here and maybe there isn't. And we don't think that nationalisation is a good solution either. But leave that aside. Let's at least try to insist upon coherence here, shall we?

 In a speech to the Fabian Society new year conference, he will say rising costs and falling fee payments from councils had seen 380 care home businesses declared insolvent since 2010.
...
"So a Labour government would give social care the funding it needs and give a firm commitment to take failed private care homes into public ownership to maintain social care protection.

That coherence being what's missing here. The initial insistence is that the government isn't spending enough on care homes. The solution is thus that the government will take them over and become entirely responsible for them? That's going to help, is it?

And we can meet this coming the other way too. If funding levels are raised then the care homes won't go bust and thus need not be nationalised. Even, if government doesn't have to buy the homes (and they would, you cannot nationalise without compensation) then there would be more in the budget to pay for funding, wouldn't there? 

Yes, we realise that we and Jeremy are most unlikely ever to get on and all that but our wish for the new year really is that people start proposing actually coherent public policy, not just sound bites to please the crowd.