Thursday, November 06, 2025
Be careful who you vote for
They tell us about Phil Price, whose mother is in Grove House in Adlington, one of the homes earmarked for closure by the Reform-run council:
He said: “My mum is 93. If she finds out about this, it’ll kill her.”
He said he was disgusted at what he fears is a conflict of interest involving Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care, Graham Dalton, who owns a private care company in Lancashire.
“I’m a paid-up member of Reform and I’m disgusted with him,” said Price.
He voted for Reform knowing they planned to cut “waste”. But he said: “If there are parents who have paid into the system all their lives, worked hard for this country, if they’re ‘waste’, then we might as well just give up.” He said he would quit Reform UK if the homes closed.
The paper says that Lancashire’s Reform-run council has been accused of “selling off the family silver” through its plans to save £4m a year by closing five council-run care homes and five day centres and moving residents into the private sector:
At the same time questions are also being asked about a potential conflict of interest involving Reform’s cabinet member for social care in Lancashire, who owns a private care company with his wife, Dalton, a nurse, insisted he was not conflicted:
He told the committee he was a part owner of 1st for Care GB. The company, based in Lancaster, offers private care, including 24-hour complex care and respite care.
But he said he had “no pecuniary or non-pecuniary interest” in the care home closures.
He was challenged by councillors including Liz McInnes, a former Labour MP who now sits on Rossendale borough council.
She said: “I’m fairly sure that on our council if someone was part-owner of a care service that would at least be counted as a non-pecuniary interest because they could potentially benefit from care homes closing.”
On Wednesday evening the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, said on X: “If this is what happens when Reform runs a council, just imagine [Nigel] Farage running the country – care homes closed and vulnerable people abandoned. We cannot let Trump’s America become Farage’s Britain.”
This is why it is important to establish that whoever you vote for has detailed policies and some idea of how they will deliver on them, something lacking for Nigel Farage's party at present, at any level.
