ANDY BURNHAM was urged today to prove to keep his vow to abandon 40 years of neoliberalism by legislating for a national care service before the end of this parliament. Unlike NHS care, social care is not free at the point of use, and high costs sometimes mean people are forced to sell their homes to pay for what they need. The PM is expected to make an intervention on social care in the coming days having set out plans for the creation of a national care service for England while he was health secretary in Gordon Brown’s administration. This should provide the stepping stone for an “ambitious National Care Service, with national standards at its core” as having England’s current social care system mostly delivered by private companies has seen it “run down by huge funding cuts and profit extraction.” We Own It director Cat Hobbs urged PM to tackle “the desperately important issue of who owns and runs social care.