Tory manifesto: more elderly people will have to pay for own soci... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/17/theresa-may-c...

Tory manifesto: more elderly people will

have to pay for own social care
Theresa May unveils difficult but necessary measure to pay for elderly care and is
expected to retain promise of limiting immigration to tens of thousands

The prime minister is expected to announce an end to the triple lock on pensions in the manifesto. Photograph: Jack
Taylor/Getty Images

Rowena Mason, Heather Stewart and Denis Campbell

Wednesday 17 May 2017 22.14BST

More elderly people will have to pay for their own social care in the home and lose
universal benets under a new Conservative policy which, Theresa May will say on
Thursday, is dicult but necessary to tackle the crisis in funding.

Introducing the partys election manifesto, the prime minister will say it is the
responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the challenges ahead as she
unveils a controversial policy that would reduce the value of estates that many people
hope to pass on to their children.

The policy will be a agship measure in the Tories election manifesto, which the prime
minister will pitch as a programme for solving some of the challenges facing Britain. It
means wealthier people with more than 100,000 in assets will have to pay for their own

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elderly care out of the value of their homes, rather than relying on the council to cover
the costs of visits by care workers.

The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not
have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are
alive. Instead, products will be available allowing the elderly to pay by extracting equity
from their homes, which will be recovered at a later date when they die or sell their
residence.

Labour responded to the announcement by saying that people could not trust the Tories
promises on social care. Barbara Keeley, shadow minister for social care, said: In their
last manifesto, they promised a cap on care costs. But they broke their promise, letting
older and vulnerable people down.

Its the Tories who have pushed social care into crisis; their cuts to councils have meant
4.6bn axed from social care budgets between 2010 and 2015, leaving 1.2 million
people struggling to get by without care. And NHS bosses have recently said that the
money the Tories promised them wont help alleviate the problems.

To provide a more immediate boost in funding for social care, the government will also
end universal winter fuel payments of 100 to 300 a year for pensioners, bringing in a
means-tested system instead. The Conservatives declined to say how much they would
raise from this, or what limits they would place on who is eligible for the benets, but
the payments currently cost the government around 2bn a year.

The manifesto is set to have a markedly dierent tone from Labours, which promises a
populist programme of mass nationalisation, more spending on the NHS, the abolition of
tuition fees and an end to the public sector pay cap.

May billed it as a declaration of intent: a commitment to get to grips with the great
challenges of our time and to take the big, dicult decisions that are right for Britain in
the long term.

People are rightly sceptical of politicians who claim to have easy answers to deeply
complex problems. It is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the
challenges ahead and the hard work required to overcome them, she will say.

Other measures expected to be included in the manifesto are:

A pledge to scrap free school lunches for infants to pay for free
breakfasts for all primary pupils, saving around 650 a year per pupil, which will be used
to increase schools funding by about 4bn over the parliament.

Extra charges for businesses that employ workers from overseas and higher charges

for foreigners who use the NHS.

A ditching of the triple lock on increasing the state pension, as

signalled by May and other ministers during the campaign.

The care policy is an attempt to meet the cost of looking after the elderly in their homes,
which councils across the country are struggling to fund in the face of severe budget
cuts. In turn, this has been putting unprecedented pressure on the NHS.

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At present, people have to pay for their social care at home if they have wealth of more
than 23,500, excluding the value of their residence. Under the new policy, people will
have to pay for their social care only if they have wealth of more than 100,000 but the
value of their homes will be included as well. As a result, more homeowners will be
liable to pay for the cost of home helps and carers provided by the council.

It is better news for the elderly in residential care, whose homes are already included in
calculations of their assets. It means they will now only have to pay for their care until
they have remaining assets of 100,000, instead of 23,500. There are no details on
when the policy would be implemented, but it is likely that it would require consultation
and legislation.

The Conservatives will also say they plan to do more to integrate the NHS and social
care, stop unnecessary stays in hospitals, and examine how to make better use of
technology to help people live independently for longer. An additional measure to help
family carers will be a new right to request unpaid leave from work to look after a
relative for up to a year.

May will hope the measures address deep concerns about the long-term costs of funding
social care, which have been having a knock-on eect on the NHS as more elderly people
stay in hospital.

On Thursday, doctors leaders will accuse ministers of a callous disregard of the NHS
and putting its funding into deep freeze. The British Medical Association will call on
ministers to plug the enormous funding gap in healthcare spending between Britain
and other major European countries.

May said at a press conference on Wednesday that the manifesto would seek to address
ve major challenges, in an echo of social reformer William Beveridges ve giant evils.

The social care announcement is likely to get a mixed reception, as some Conservatives
will worry about it going down badly with middle-class voters who want to pass on the
value of their homes to their children.

May is already under pressure from some on the right of her party over interventionist
policies, such as her pledge to cap energy costs for households. Previous attempts to
reform the funding of social care have met with deep hostility from the rightwing press,
which branded Labour proposals for a levy on estates a death tax.

Her decision to include a measure that could be unpopular with middle-aged and elderly
voters is likely to be taken as a sign of condence in winning the election, given the
Tories double-digit lead in the polls over Labour. Strategists also hope it will paint the
prime minister as a realist and pragmatist in contrast to Labours manifesto promising
more spending on public services paid for by higher taxes on companies and high
earners.

Other measures in the manifesto are likely to include proposals on improving skills and
apprenticeships, and a promised expansion of workers rights, which Labour has
dismissed as spin.

The document is also likely to retain the Conservative commitment to bringing down

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immigration to the tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands. That approach was
challenged on Wednesday by a leader in the Evening Standard newspaper, edited by the
former chancellor George Osborne, which claimed that no senior cabinet ministers
support Mays desire to keep the target.

In a leader column, the newspaper said there had been an assumption at the top of the
Conservative party that May would use the election to bury the pledge made by David
Cameron before he was elected in 2010 because it was unachievable and undesirable.
Thats what her cabinet assumed; none of its senior members supports the pledge in
private and all would be glad to see the back of something that has caused the
Conservative party such public grief, the newspaper said.

Editorials are written anonymously as the voice of the newspaper, but Osborne tweeted
a link to the column and the front page of the Evening Standard, which attributes a
squeeze in the cost of living to ination caused by Brexit.

Topics
Social care
Conservatives/General election 2017/Theresa May/Fuel poverty/Housing/news

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