On 18 May 2017, the Conservative Party Manifesto 2017 was launched ahead of the upcoming election. One of the topics covered in the manifesto is the problem of our “ageing society”. The manifesto says: “as our society ages, the costs of caring for older generations rise; so we face difficult decisions.”
So what does the manifesto have to say about the “difficult decisions” with elderly care?
“Our system of care for the elderly is not working. It is not fair that how much you pay for care depends in large part on whether you own your own home. Under the current system, care costs deplete an individual’s assets, including in some cases the family home, down to £23,250 or even less. We intend to tackle this with three connected measures:
- We will align the future basis for means-testing for domiciliary care with that for residential care. This will mean that the value of the family home will be taken into account along with other assets and income, whether care is provided at home, or in a residential or nursing care home.
- We will introduce a single capital floor, set at £100,000. This will ensure that, no matter how large the cost of care turns out to be, people will always retain at least £100,000 of their savings and assets, including value in the family home.
- We will extend the current freedom to defer payments for residential care to those receiving care at home, so no-one will have to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for care.”
Whilst this goes some way to addressing the issues, the three measures sadly fail to take into account the following:-
- The value of a person’s home will be taken into account in a financial assessment for domiciliary care (that is, care at home), whereas at present it is not.
- The detail in relation to the much-lauded “costs cap” that was supposed to be introduced by the Care Act 2014 – which was delayed and now appears to have been scrapped – showed that references to “care” do not include the costs of “accommodation”, and Local Authority contributions to care costs are insufficient to meet the true cost of care resulting in the need for “top ups”, such that the £100,000 “capital floor” is highly unlikely to be a true representation of what individuals will be able to pass on to their chosen beneficiaries.
- Extending “the current freedom to defer payments for residential care to those receiving care at home” is another way of saying “our first measure will result in far more people paying for their care at home, so we will make them run up a debt on their homes to pay for this”.
So, all in all, the manifesto is a negative, rather than a positive, step in dealing with the problem of our ageing society and care costs.
