Andy Burnham's recent promise of free social care for everyone in England, built on NHS principles, sets a high bar.

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I spent twenty years as an NHS doctor and then ran care services, and I welcome the ambition. The system I know is not short of good people. It is short of a plan.

But I have watched enough reform come and go to know how the argument now underway will go. Baroness Casey's review, the row over the triple lock, the question of which taxes might rise: all of it will be about how much money the system needs. That is the wrong place to start. The better question is what the money would buy, and how much of it the system as currently organised would quietly absorb before it ever reached a front line.

Every care home, home-care agency, GP surgery, dental practice and pharmacy in England is required by law to write, maintain and regularly review a large body of policies and procedures, such as safeguarding a vulnerable adult, handling medicines, managing infection, and responding to a complaint.

And yes, I know policies and........

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