Cllr Spencer Gardner is Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group on Portsmouth City Council

Andy Burnham wants to “rip the plaster off” social care. Before he does, he might want to have a word with Theresa May.

In 2017, May went into the General Election with a Conservative majority. She emerged without one. Her social care proposals became one of the most politically damaging elements of the Conservative manifesto. While they included a more generous £100,000 capital floor, they also meant that the value of people’s homes could be taken into account when assessing contributions towards care at home. Opponents quickly branded the policy a “dementia tax”.

The result is well known. The Conservatives lost 13 seats and May was left without an overall majority. The lesson was brutal but simple: social care reform is easy to promise. Paying for it is not.

That lesson has not changed. If anything, Britain’s demographic pressures have made it more relevant. People are living longer, often with multiple long-term conditions, while the number of working-age taxpayers available to support an ageing population grows more slowly. The challenge facing policymakers is not identifying the problem. Everyone can see it. The challenge is deciding who pays.

Now Burnham is proposing to solve the same problem by travelling in the opposite direction. He wants an NHS-style National Care Service, free at the point of use and available to everyone. “Everyone contributes, everyone’s covered,” he says. There is just one rather important omission: the cost.

Burnham has confirmed that the system would not be introduced before the next General Election. Instead, Labour would put the proposal in its manifesto and seek a mandate for it. That means voters are being asked to consider the destination without being shown the fare.

And that is where the comparison with Theresa May becomes uncomfortable for Labour. May’s problem was that voters could immediately see who might pay more under her proposals. Burnham’s proposal is politically more attractive because the cost is largely hidden behind the reassuring phrase “free at the point of use”. Yet free at the point of use does not mean free.

The NHS is free at the point of use. Taxpayers pay for it. State schools are free at the point of use. Taxpayers pay for them too. Social care cannot escape the same logic. If services become universally free to access, someone must fund the expansion through higher taxation, higher borrowing, cuts elsewhere, or some combination of all three.

Burnham himself says that everyone will contribute. The obvious question is how. Will taxes rise? Will National Insurance increase? Will spending elsewhere be cut? Will there be a levy on assets or estates? Will pressure grow to revisit the state pension triple lock? Or will future generations simply inherit the bill? These are not minor details. They are the policy.

Every serious proposal for social care reform eventually collides with the same reality: whether the burden falls on taxpayers, pensioners, homeowners, working-age earners or future generations. The debate is not whether people contribute, but how and through what mechanism.

That is why successive governments of different political colours have struggled to resolve the issue. Numerous reviews, commissions and cross-party discussions have reached broadly similar conclusions. Social care needs reform. The current system creates uncertainty for families. Local authorities face increasing pressures. Demand continues to grow. Yet whenever a proposal moves from principle to practice, politicians discover that voters are rather less enthusiastic about the bill than they are about the aspiration.

Labour may believe that voters have become more receptive to a more expansive state. Perhaps they have. But even if there is broad support for a National Care Service in theory, theory is the easy part. The difficult conversations begin when ministers explain how many billions of pounds will be required and where that money will come from.

The political temptation is obvious, talk about the service now and the funding later. Focus on dignity, fairness and peace of mind. Avoid the discussion about tax rates, departmental budgets or public borrowing until after the election.

If a proposal is strong enough to seek a mandate from the electorate, it should be strong enough to include a funding mechanism before that mandate is sought. Voters deserve to know not merely what they are being offered but what they are being asked to pay. One of the enduring frustrations of social care debates is that politicians often present difficult decisions as though they can somehow be escaped. They cannot. There are only choices. Someone pays, somehow. The only uncertainty is who and through what means.

Theresa May’s social care reforms unravelled because voters focused relentlessly on the question of who would pay. Andy Burnham is hoping voters will focus on anything except that question. He may find that, sooner or later, they ask it anyway. And when they do, “free at the point of use” will not be an answer.

The question is not whether social care should be reformed. Most people agree that it should. The question, just as it was in 2017, is who pays for it. Until Labour is prepared to answer that, Burnham’s National Care Service is a promise rather than a policy.