It is an adjustment. It's not getting rid of the whole concept of the triple lock. This releases this much. The NHS truly will be able to make savings, cashable savings, from a better social care system. And then if there's a shortfall, well, we'd have to be honest about that shortfall and say where that money's coming from.
And Andy, thank you so much for talking to us.
National Care Service announced to huge acclaim. Everyone contributes. Everyone is covered. Fully funded. I was listening very carefully. So, it's a simple question that I think many people are excited at this prospect.
If it is fully funded, what's it going to cost? How are you going to pay for it? Why should we believe you?
Well, I'm absolutely determined to do it for the reasons I gave today. We won't have a country ready for the 21st century until we have care services that support people with dementia as well as they currently support people with cancer. It's a very different experience depending which one of those conditions somebody has. So, what I've announced at Labour Party conference is the big vision: a National Care Service that can work to NHS principles, because then you can have a system that works from home to hospital and back again, a more efficient way of providing care rather than two systems. And the big enabling decision that unlocks a National Care Service, which is the adjustment to the triple lock that I've announced this afternoon. Now, I don't want to avoid your question, but it is now for Louise Casey to look at the options for a National Care Service in terms of how it's done, what time it comes in, and we will bring forward that detail at next year's conference.
But in that sense, it's not fully funded then. I think that's what I'm trying to push at here, because if you don't know when and you don't know how much social care reform, triple lock reform is going to give you, you can't guarantee that the money's there or how much it will cost when it gets there.
No, it will be fully funded. That's what I was saying today, that when we do introduce it, it will be fully funded, and we'll obviously make those proposals next year.
You know, if you don't, because you...
Because we will do it. You know, there are options to do it. You could obviously, if you wanted, put the time back, the date back by which the service comes in, because the triple lock decision will release the billions that will release as we go through the next decade. So, there's obviously a timing question there. I would like to introduce it as early as possible.
There's a sense that might be 2040.
Well, we would... I mean, I don't think we could leave it that late, because the pressure on the NHS by that point is already intolerable. And as I said in my speech, it could actually break the NHS. I wouldn't want to do that. And there are savings to be unlocked from the NHS. Now, I know this from personal experience. The amount of times people in home care or residential care ring 999 to try and send somebody into hospital, it is actually quite alarming. Now, it's not to blame the staff. They're told to do that. But the social care system just offloads onto the NHS. And then those people go in by ambulance into A&E, can spend weeks then in a hospital bed. All of it unnecessary.
I think people recognise this, don't they? I guess the question keeps coming back to how much do we save from adjusting the triple lock in the first five years, for example? What's that number? Because we need that number, then we need the number of the cost of social care. And those numbers need to match.
The detail is being set out actually this afternoon by the Treasury on that, because there's a lot of work been going on. The number for the end of the decade...
Yes, is around 15 billion. So...
But if you want social care before that, you're going to need to have... My point is you're going to need...
The point is, I was just going to come to. The point is it builds up over the decade. So...
So, you might need additional funding mechanisms before that builds up.
