Kate Garraway has blasted Wes Streeting over ‘unpayable debt’ in a fierce row on the anniversary of Derek Draper’s death.
The 57-year-old presenter’s husband died a year ago aged 56 after a long battle with several health problems after contracting Covid-19.
On Friday’s episode of Good Morning Britain, she confronted the Health Secretary after the Labour government’s admission that social care reforms and plans for long-term funding might not be delivered until 2028.
‘I’m thinking about Derek. It happens to be the one year anniversary of his death today. A day that is only relevant to me,’ she said.
She noted that she has had two separate appeals for funding ‘pushed back’, while her family still hadn’t heard the outcome when he went into Intensive Care before his death.
‘In the meantime I am lucky, I’ve got an incredible job which pays well, but I was having to fund the situation,’ she explained.
‘Now I’ve got excessive, unpayable debt because of it. And if I am in that position, what else are people going to be? People cant afford four more years of this.’
Streeting said ‘all of us are with you’ as Kate deals with such an emotionally difficult day.
‘I think one of the reasons we have ended into short term cycle of failure is whenever we talk about social care, there are always costs involved,’ he responded via video call from Carlisle.
‘And that makes people want to run to the hills and stick their heads in the sand in politics, cause sometimes those numbers can be scary.
‘One of the reasons I genuinely think that even with the size of the majority we have got, it is a good thing to try to build cross party consensus.
‘I want to come up with a plan that means whoever’s in Government after the next General Election, or the one after that… that broadly speaking we keep the same direction of travel on social care, in the way that we have with the NHS since 1948.’
Earlier last year, Kate admitted that the medical bills to cover Draper’s care had sent her into an estimated debt between £500,000-£800,000 – while some outlets reported that those debts could have gone above £1 million by the summer.
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‘Derek’s care costs more than my salary from ITV and that is before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay any household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids, so we are at a crunch point,’ she said in a documentary before his death.
‘I am in debt. I can’t earn enough money to cover my debt because I am managing Derek’s care and I can’t even use the money I do have to support Derek’s recovery because it’s going on the basics all the time.’
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Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV1.
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