The cry has gone up from the Opposition parties that the government should reform social care. Labour in office promised to do so but found it too difficult and abandoned the idea. Mrs May in office made proposals which proved to be very unpopular and was unable to find a compromise reform which the Opposition parties liked. It turned out there are as many variants of social care reform as there are political parties. I have never personally pledged to campaign for social care financial reform, and have always been cautious about the subject having studied various plans and seen the degree of disagreement there is about both the objectives and the shape of reform.
Today I am inviting those interested to write in with their thoughts again on this vexed topic. I am particularly interested in what people think the aim of reform should be, as well as in the more normal question of who pays for the care people need?
I have championed changes to social care to improve the service for those who need it. This seems to be the forgotten issue amongst many reform plans. The government does need to set out again clear rules governing the relative responsibilities of care homes and the NHS. Care homes whether private or public sector need to work closely with GPs and the local hospitals to ensure elderly residents have good access to free NHS care as they are entitled to. The NHS should not send patients back to a care home prematurely as some did during the pandemic with bad consequences for the patients and other residents at the Care home. GPs might like to offer – as some do -surgery times at established Care Homes to cover the residents needs as well as making on line consultations and prescription renewal accessible. The local hospital needs good links and understanding with Care Home Managers. There is a temptation by Care Homes to send residents to the local hospital on a precautionary basis where better understanding and contact might allow the resident to stay with GP supervision in the Care Home.
I also wish to see decent standards of accommodation and catering. Where someone is supported by taxpayer money for the living costs in a Care Home the budget should be sufficiently generous to provide a decent standard and good pay for the Care workers. The sums involved may well need to vary around the country as property cost is an important part of total cost and property costs are very variable. A property based supplement to amounts should reflect objective property cost figures by area.
It is also important for Homes to have good programmes of activities for residents for those who wish to join in with them in public rooms or on outings. There must be quality of life as well as security and protection.
It has been a longstanding policy of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties when in government that whilst all healthcare is free living costs are not free for those who have private income or surplus capital. Surplus capital includes the value of their own former home if they no longer need it as they are on their own or are going to live out their remaining days in a Care home with their partner. I accepted this policy when my own parents had to go into a care home. I helped them choose a good one and helped them sell their flat to pay the bills. Some now argue that there should be a higher permitted amount of capital that people can pass on to the beneficiaries of their wills. I think most accept that a rich person on a large pension or with substantial wealth should continue to pay their living costs in old age. If the state does opt for a higher permitted capital amount then there will be the need for extra taxes on the rest of us to pay for this alteration to allow the inheritance. Should this line be redrawn?
May 20, 2021
‘Some now argue that there should be a higher permitted amount of capital that people can pass on to the beneficiaries of their wills.’
People means the average person. The rich have lawyers and trusts so their wills do not get clobbered with inheritance tax.
IHT is just the latest racket. Government will take more of people’s hard enough property. People, quite justifiably, will learn to hide assets.
May 20, 2021
‘Hard earned property’
May 20, 2021
The trick is perhaps to safely give it all away or spend it before you die or you need the care home provision. Or to leave the UK and become domiciled somewhere with little or no IHT or other taxes. Short leases or property rented from children perhaps.
All the UK taxes we have (including IHT) can very easily take 90%+ of your assets off you in just 20 years or so. £1 million invested with no tax might well grow to £8 million over this time yet with all the UK taxes you might end up with less than the £1m you started with – even before the inflation loss has been allowed for.
May 20, 2021
“If you need to move into a care home and you have savings and assets worth more than the following thresholds, you won’t be eligible for local authority funding and will usually have to fund your own care.
£23,250 in England and Northern Ireland
£28,750 in Scotland
£50,000 in Wales
Different thresholds apply for funding care at home.
So, it might be tempting to give away some of your assets to try to reduce your capital and help you qualify for care funding. But be aware, there are strict rules for gifting assets, and there can be serious consequences if you do this incorrectly.
For example, if the local authority believes you intentionally reduced your assets to increase your chances of getting financial support, it may regard this as a ‘deliberate deprivation of assets’. If so, the assets you’ve given away will still be taken into account when the council assesses your ability to pay for care.” Source Which.co.uk
May 20, 2021
a-tracy
Do not forget the 7 year rule as well, if you die before 7 years, the people to who you have gifted money or assets are due to pay tax on those assets, a real problem for them if they have already spent the money.
Our tax system is so spiteful, and all consuming:
tax when you earn
tax when you save
tax when you invest
tax when you spend
tax when you give it away
tax when you die
Sometimes you actually wonder who you are working for, yourself and family, or the Government and other people.
May 20, 2021
Tax when you breathe
May 21, 2021
Very well said, Alan.
I have one child, and would like to be able to help him financially, in my lifetime, but I cant help but worrying about the 7 year rule(I am 81). I have spent a lifetime of hard work, as have many others, and am still paying a large amount if tax.
I don’t wish to be a burden on the taxpayer, but it seems unfair, not to be able to help ones child/children, without all this worry.
May 20, 2021
Indeed you clearly need to do it carefully, legally and early enough & not at one minute to midnight.
May 21, 2021
Differential thresholds. A good basis for reviewing the Barnett formula
May 20, 2021
Giving it away is fraught with difficulty, and indeed challenges. You may ‘give lump sums’ away or pass an ‘old car of 1 year age’ on to relatives to try to avoid Care Home fees but the estate can be challenged as intentional avoidance.
May 20, 2021
Trusts have largely been made ineffective by new damaging tax rules and who want to give all their money to lawyers and tax planners? Though it is clearly a moral duty to reduce the amount of tax you pay given the government waste it hand over fist. Probably best to cover IHT with cheap term life cover while young and in good health then give the money away, live seven years and then just live on a pension income or the generosity of your children for your last few years. Or leave the UK?
May 20, 2021
@Peter; IHT is not solely about property, someone could (due to a nomad work life) live in rented properties but amass personal savings above the IHT threshold.
But that said, surely anyone with a property based Estate whose value is at or above the IHT threshold is in a position to seek legal and financial advice via their banks, mortgage provider or solicitor with regards living gifts or wills, along with perhaps downsizing, to manage their exposure to IHT. I suspect the real problem is, many ‘average people’ are simply ignorant of, and to the implications of, IHT.
May 20, 2021
Silly comment, the ‘rich’ pay for their own care.
May 20, 2021
Touch
So does anyone with assets over £24,000, hardly rich in this day and age !
May 20, 2021
Good morning
The problem with care of the elderly is that the family would usually do it but, since just about everyone must now work to pay the ever increasing bills there is no one left so, people go out to work to pay for someone else to do it. This has created a growth industry as more and more people are living longer.
The solution is difficult and it is not going to be helped by creating more government. That would just lead to an NHS 2.0 with large salaries for the few and poor service for the many.
People need to take responsibility for themselves and those in their immediate family. The State should resist getting involved. All it does is create another layer (on my Council Tax) of government that has to be paid for.
We need to re-learn self-reliance.
May 20, 2021
Mark B
+1
May 20, 2021
Indeed.
“The solution is difficult and it is not going to be helped by creating more government.” Certainly – far less government is the best solution as we would all be richer if there were far fewer people parasitising off them. Abandoning the net zero lunacy would also be sensible for the same reason.
Talking of green lunacy it seems Grenville Tower flats cost about £100k per flat to clad each one – this to save perhaps £100 PA at most in fuel per flat. So a 1000 year payback, except the cladding would have only last 20 years or so. What mad donkeys we have in charge.
May 20, 2021
Lifelogic
More government?
I wonder how many quango and pseudo quangos are employed in the front line and back offices of the whole care industry ?
How many are really needed I ask myself?
May 20, 2021
Indeed.
May 20, 2021
Indeed, and they could have insulated the internal walls (of the outside walls), would have made the rooms very slightly smaller by about 100mm but perhaps a better and more efficient (heat loss) solution to the problem, and little or no fire risk to the complete structure, as any fire would be contained by the concrete walls/floors separating the flats.
All basic and proven systems/materials which have been used safely for years, and no scaffold required to fix in place, so safer working for all, and no wet weather or high wind delays.
Can only guess they wanted to make the building look more modern, and perhaps and in addition, the original structure may have been leaking or was failing in some way, hence the reason they did what they did ?
May 21, 2021
The point was to make the building look less ugly from the outside to increase the value of the Tory voter’s nearby properties of Kensington and Chelsea – Tory – Council though.
May 21, 2021
MiC
That is a ridiculous claim.
Hundreds of buildings have been clad and many in Labour Council areas.
May 20, 2021
Exactly!
+1
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
@Mark B; Your paragraphs 1 and 3 create a circular argument loop…!
“The solution is difficult and it is not going to be helped by creating more government. That would just lead to an NHS 2.0 with large salaries for the few and poor service for the many.”
Not necessarily, any such NHS 2.0 simply needs regulating in the same way as NHS 1.0 was, the problems have come with the xx point increment add-ons and updates, how about we roll-back to first principles, get rid of self managing NHS Trusts, remove the profit motive etc?
May 20, 2021
As you say:- “The NHS should not send patients back to a care home prematurely as some did during the pandemic with bad consequences for the patients and other residents at the Care home.”
Dumping people from hospitals into care homes (either Covid tested positive or untested) was Hancock’s, government and NHS top brass policy it seems. It was a total outrage. The only person I know who died of Covid was admitted for a minor stroke, infected with Covid in hospital, dumped untested into a care home (to infect others) then send home for a day (risking more people) then readmitted to hospital finally tested (found positive) and died the next day. (refused any real treatment due to his age). Has the NHS not existed he would still be alive.
Let’s all clap for the state virtual monopoly, communist NHS. Measured by outcomes in international comparisons it is an appalling rationing & waiting list system. It fails millions and kills thousands.
Yet nearly all political parties support it. Further the NHS anti-competitive funding model (free at the point of rationing and delay) kills nearly all private alternatives and innovation. This as people choosing alternatives have to pay 4 times over.
May 20, 2021
@LL; “Has the NHS not existed he would still be alive.”
More assertions from Mr Lifelogic, perhaps had the NHS been properly funded, more wards open and fully staffed, more hospitals etc, there would not have been the pressure/need to ‘dump’ elderly into care homes or discharge their to quickly into the care of their families, or perhaps no one (the test appears to be if they can make a hot drink and use a microwave cooker). Perhaps had your friend been able to get a regular health check and assessment, either at his own GP surgery or a local NHS walk-in centre, he might never have had the stroke in the first place.
“Measured by outcomes in international comparisons it is an appalling rationing & waiting list system. It fails millions and kills thousands. “
Leaving your hyperbolic language aside, I though you were talking about the NHS, not the appalling US health care system.
May 20, 2021
As usual Jerry you revert at the end of your ranting response to LL, to compare the NHS to the health system in America.
There are over 15 health systems other than America ranked as being better than the NHS.
Why not copy the very best?
May 20, 2021
@Peter2; On your contrary (t)roll again I see, you seem intent on playing the man all the time, rather than the ball… The truth about the US health care system obviously stings you Peter, no surprise though, and yet again you choose to take my comments out of context, I was purposely being somewhat hyperbolic (in my comparisons), just as @LL had been about the NHS.
May 20, 2021
It isn’t trolling to simply point out that there are other better systems of national health care in other nations.
Don’t get so stroppy Jerry.
Why not copy the best in the world?
May 21, 2021
@Peter2; Compare your reply to me with that of Lifelogic, you ‘played the man’, Lifelogic responded to the substance and context of my comment.
May 21, 2021
Whateva…you sound like a teenager Jezza.
May 21, 2021
Rubbish Jerry
Your argument was to compare the NHS, as you always do, to America.
I yet again pointed out to you that there are lots of health systems with better outcomes than our NHS and suggested we should copy the best ones here in the UK.
A question I asked you that you have yet again decided to ignore.
May 21, 2021
@Peter2; Whatever… Your comment is just more proof that some on the right expect others to do as they say, not as they do. So all the time some keep equating Socialism with Communism why shouldn’t I compare the NHS and the US health systems.
May 21, 2021
What a bizarre response Jerry.
Avoiding answering anything put to you.
If you want a better NHS in the future then copy those systems that clearly provide a better outcome.
May 22, 2021
What a bizarre response Peter2..
You are simply disregarding any opinion, as “avoiding answering anything put to you” (often via a loaded question), that does not match your own pre-conceived opinion, you really haven’t grasped this ‘Debate’ idea have you – either that you you are simply trolling me. 🙁
In my opinion the NHS is the best option!
Should the UK opt for say the German health care system, and it has many merits, how long will it be before the right-wing demand ‘deregulation’ of such a system, allow “market forces” to decide what the (once?) compulsory premium should be, suggesting that “market forces” will surely drive prices down (where have we heard that lie before…), how long before a UK version of the German health system morphs -due to “market forces”- into a full-fat US style system.
The UK simply doesn’t have enough of an unstable political system to safeguard necessary, essential, social services as many other countries do, as the LibDems kept pointing out during their most recent period in UK coalition, much to the displeasure of some on the right who always wanted to go further, faster, than the necessary LD votes would allow.
May 22, 2021
OK Jerry, then just stop comparing the NHS to America’s health system, as if that were the only alternative health system, every time anyone posts about trying to improve the NHS.
Just immediately responding with…so you would like an American system, is just silly posturing and is your way of trying to close down debate.
May 23, 2021
@Peter2; “comparing the NHS to America’s health system, as if that were the only alternative health system”
I explained why. Did you actually bother to read my comment, or did your knees simply jerk on sight of my comment. I think you like wasting our hosts (and my) time, is it your hobby? Ho-hmm….
“just silly posturing and is your way of trying to close down debate.”
More “Whataboutery”, more playing the man instead of the ball, were was your attempt to further the debate, reply to the issues/worries I raised. It seems to me honest debate is the very last thing you and your politics want, the truth would most likely cause voters of fair mind to run
for Mr Corbyn’s Labour party, if not the Socialist Labour partysorry, …run for the hills in a cloud of dust and you know it.May 23, 2021
Ho hum indeed Jerry.
Wasting time…hilarious.
Best to know when you are debating when you have lost.
Everyone can tell because you go off at a tangent, get all stroppy and avoid the actual arguments.
As usual
May 20, 2021
The US healthcare system has it problems, mainly too much litigation (as has the UK) and often over treatment of people with private insurance. Doctors and medical staff also earn two to three times UK rates. The main health problem in the US and here too is surely obesity. Far better systems exist than the UK’s communist rationing one with 5 million waiting procedures –
Switzerland for example. The system is funded through enrollee premiums, taxes (mostly cantonal), social insurance contributions, and out-of-pocket payments. Residents are required to purchase insurance from private nonprofit insurers. Adults also pay yearly deductibles, in addition to coinsurance (with an annual cap) for all services. Coverage includes most physician visits, hospital care, pharmaceuticals, devices, home care, medical services in long-term care, and physiotherapy.
Patients or insurance companies need to pay so that the GP, Specialist or Hospital actually wants the customers rather than wanting to deter customers as with the dire NHS.
May 20, 2021
@LL; “[Swiss] Residents are required to purchase insurance from private nonprofit insurer”
What is it about some on the right wing and their fascination with which hand their money is taken, if the State mandates a fee to be paid it is a tax, either explicitly of by another name.
May 21, 2021
It is about outcomes Jerry
Left or right wing is irrelevant.
The healthcare outcomes in numerous other nations are better than the UK.
Why don’t we just copy the very best systems?
May 21, 2021
@Peter2; “The healthcare outcomes in numerous other nations are better than the UK.”
Yes, but as @LL pointed out, many have far worse outcomes, some (over commercialised) health care systems even over treat/intervene, whilst many would cost the average person on the Clapham omnibus far more than the NHS does, relative to the care provided.
“Why don’t we just copy the very best systems?”
Is that not a subjective, and somewhat political, judgement?
But you make a good point, so let’s agree, we just need to copy what the UK had back in 1950, an NHS free at the point of need (for UK citizens & regulated workers), updated for the latest medical advances… 😛
May 21, 2021
Some do have worse outcomes Jerry.
So copy those that have better outcomes.
The 1950s are long gone.
Change is required to create continual improvement.
May 22, 2021
@Peter2; “The 1950s are long gone.”
So are the Thatcherite 1980s, but you still demand we all worship that era!
Another of your “Do as I say, not as I do” moments.
“Change is required to create continual improvement.”
I agree, hence why I said “[a 1950 era NHS] updated for the latest medical advances”.
May 22, 2021
Stop making things up Jerry
I have never said what you are claiming
Copy the best health systems in the world.
Copy the best parts that could greatly improve our NHS.
May 23, 2021
@Peter; You really are on a contrary (t)roll… I quoted what you said, and then replied to what you said, fair enough you might not like my reply but don’t try to disclaim your own words!
“Copy the best parts that could greatly improve our NHS.”
How many more time… In my opinion the NHS is the best, there is nothing to copy from elsewhere. Many of the health systems you (unspoken) suggest were already in place before the NHS was created, some before even the Beverage report (in Germany and France for example), do you honestly think no one involved with either Beverage or Bevan considered considered such systems? Of course the NHS can be made better, no one has said otherwise. the easiest way would be to follow the ideal in the Beverage report more closely, updated for modern medicine -not accountancy- practises…
May 23, 2021
So at last Jerry you agree it would be useful to study the best health systems in the world and copy the best parts of those systems.
Progress of sorts.
About 15 are regarded as having better patient outcomes
So a few to examine and see if improvement can be made.
I assume you want to help the NHS to improve?
PS
I never said anything about demanding anyone should worship Lady Thatcher.
Your words not mine.
May 20, 2021
I agree patients in care homes should pay a mess bill, for want of a better description. The impoverished from pension and the rest from private means. The bill should not exceed the basic state pension level.
Everything else the care home does, the majority of the cost, should come from taxation. It would end the argument over the feckless getting everything for nothing and the frugal being financially raped. I would like to see greater integration between NHS hospitals, GP practises, and care homes, be they privately or NHS run. The aim being a better and more equable service for those unfortunate enough to need it.
May 20, 2021
As you infer, it is far too difficult for MPs to work out, all that politics getting in the way of humanity. My best bet is that it will be kicked into touch and sweet fanny adams will get done. Politics being the usual moving roadblock.
May 20, 2021
Social care should not be that hard an issue to solve, many people will not need any care at all and many others will only need a very short period of care. Only a few will need many years of it. Perhaps some system that enables people to pay a fee to the government in advance that then protects them from having to contribute more than a certain sum for their long terms care. But then who would trust Governments to keep to this. as moving the goal posts is a favourite government activity as we see with tax, pensions and much else.
I would also support a right to die (with suitable protections) where people elect this at the time or in advance.
May 21, 2021
Social care is surely a problem for lower and middle income earners. So that’s most of us.
Doesn’t Germany have a contribution system, which has been running for 20 years now, whereby the employer pays 2% of the employees income into a social care ( care homes ) fund and the employee pays 1% of their salary into the same fund as well. This would work I believe.
Given the competing interests of hospitals to free up beds for “more needy” patients than the elderly and given that social care departments in hospitals have seen their staff decimated and so not able to cope and provide that link with care homes and the sometimes impossible position of a shortage of places available in care homes then perhaps we should be considering Govt/ NHS run care homes. Whilst nationalised industries have their problems then so do private care homes. A levy during our lifetimes would pay for this and help the Govt to fulfill its promises and obligations.
About 7 years ago I came across a link on the internet that suggested Cheshire ( East ) council were looking at a project involving a 2,500 bed care home in the heart of Cheshire. Could this be the answer to all are social care problems ?
However, can anyone throw any light on where all the money ( taxes ) have gone to provide social care facilities. My grandmother died circa 1980. For a number of years prior to her death she went into a care home. All of her state pension and widows pension were paid over to the care home except for £7 – 10 per week for her to buy treats, etc. She had savings of circa £20k+ and a nice 2 bedroom bungalow but she did not need to give these up to pay for her care as far as I am aware. So, affordable then from the public purse but not now ?
May 20, 2021
‘ … most accept that a rich person on a large pension or with substantial wealth should continue to pay their living costs in old age.’ That’s my situation and I really don’t want to be burdened with having to pay for a compulsory state insurance that will be pretty worthless to me. Conversely, I would find it hard to argue against a suggestion that I should be paying some amount of NI, for the NHS services I do make use of. Perhaps I should have to pay for my GP visits and any prescriptions.
May 20, 2021
What if a dependent fell into the need for care and that need exceeded you lifetime?
May 20, 2021
Two Ladies, one my mother – the other my Aunt (by marriage).
My Mum & Dad were always careful with money but did mange to purchase their own home, where they brought up a family and lived together for over 50 years. My Dad’s brother lived in a large council house all his life but I’m pretty sure he earned more than my Dad. They certainly had different lifestyles. Mum and Dad had holidays in caravans on the the South Coast, whilst Uncle was a very early sun seeker, always jetting off to other parts of Europe and elsewhere. There were other fairly obvious differences in lifestyle choices too. This is not a criticism (not at all), I was very fond of my uncle – he was great fun. It’s just a simple observation.
When Mum and Auntie eventually became widows, both lived for some years alone, staying in their marital homes. When the time came for them to be cared for elsewhere, Auntie had no assets to pay for her care and the local council paid the bill. Mum’s house was sold.
Everyone can have their own view of the rights and wrongs of inherited wealth – but I do think that there is a question of ‘Prudence’. Where is the incentive to be careful with money and personal expenditure if everything will be taken away towards the end of life. Why not just spend it all and just let the state pick up the bill later?
May 20, 2021
While the State behaves like this there is no answer.
May 20, 2021
There have got to be incentives to save, so hard working savers should not be forced to pay for things they would get free if they didn’t bother to save.
I know a lot of immigrants who came here fairly late in life who are getting their retirement years paid for by the rest of us, having never contributed here in their prime years, this is not fair on the rest of us.
May 20, 2021
That reminds of the migrant who arrived here a few years ago and was put straight onto the top rate disability benefit. I raised the question, how did this middle aged man get across 2 continents and specifically to the UK, if he was so disabled?
May 21, 2021
I agree, but the Politicians are very mealy mouthed about this. In fact any discussion of this nowadays, would probably be deemed as ‘racist’.!
May 20, 2021
The distinction is between Nursing homes and Care homes , however as we age many more medications are required to keep us comfortable and enjoy the remaining time of our lives. Devices such as urinary catheters are in use as ongoing support. The distinction becomes blurred and many unqualified people look after the medical needs of the ageing. It is impossible for GP’s to look after the numbers of visits required on a daily basis . As we age our systems begin to deteriorate , some more quickly than others .Our renal / liver systems change and cannot excrete drugs as in the past ,therefore each day some drugs become too strong or in some cases toxic . For example some diagnosed two years ago as having a high blood pressure may have been prescribed the correct medication which if is given out of dosette boxes on a daily basis without the monitoring and understanding of what medications do in relation to a disease could prove dangerous.The theory is that qualified staff are not needed because people i Nursing/ Care homes should be treated as if they were in their homes! Come on! since when have so many residents been collectively cared for in their own homes.
I have worked hard for 50 years or more , and have been cheated out of money . My dearest wish is to ensure my enduring struggles are compensated by handing down money to my children. What is the point of even trying if the state is going to take our money for care.. We may as well jump off a tall building!
May 20, 2021
@Margaret Brandreth; “The distinction becomes blurred and many unqualified people look after the medical needs of the ageing. It is impossible for GP’s to look after the numbers of visits required on a daily basis”
There is no excuse for non medically trained people being entrusted to carry out such care, the reason such care is not given by trained people is purely cost/profitability.
“What is the point of even trying if the state is going to take our money for care.. We may as well jump off a tall building!”
Don’t do that, the govt will still make a grab for your money, via IHT! But many people who can not get the social or community (health) care they need do just what you suggest, one way or another, except such people are unlikely to have their Estates mauled by IHT either…
May 20, 2021
Margaret, my mother feels like you do in your last paragraph, she worked until she was 70. They have never claimed a penny all their lives. Struggled to save up a house deposit for five years. They live in an area without house price hyperinflation, my Dad just keeps saying he’d want a pill if he became a burden. Is this really what we want our elderly relatives to think!
Our elderly should be treated with respect and dignity and not just seen as a liability and condemned by poisonous ageism.
If neither myself nor my siblings were in a position to care for my parents I don’t mind our ‘inheritance’ going towards their personal care instead, if I did mind then it would be up to me and them to take them in and/or pay for some care for them.
Sadly not everyone has a family. I knew a 90-year-old lady who was the only survivor in her immediate family, neighbours helped out a lot and I was amazed when she left her home to a long lost niece who did nothing for her, for years I pleaded with her to go into an independent living retirement flat nearby with support. Now I read there are certain Companies that offer these flats that rip the heart out of them with high annual costs and leave the flats unsaleable.
May 21, 2021
Tracy.
I hope you are not referring to McCarthy Stone.
I am in one of their Assisted Living developments. I agree that the fees are very high, but I know some residents in these, are assisted to live independently, and have not yet needed to go into a Care Home, where the weekly fees are astronomical, so theres a ‘saving’ there, if one likes to put it that way.
As for selling my flat, I have heard the rumours, but I am hoping for the best. Not much else I can do really.
May 21, 2021
I like residential flats with overseers that allow independent living. I like the safety aspect, the community, that someone keeps the garden’s nice and can help to arrange repairs. I have three elderly aunts that sold up and bought one and they are all happy, and an uncle lived in his until he was 96, which is more important than inheritance. You can buy nice two bedroomed retirement flats in Lytham St Annes for £80,000 with low annual charges. I didn’t want to worry you.
May 21, 2021
No, you haven’t. I’m fine, and happy here.
I’m in St. Albans, and as you probably know, the prices are very expensive here, but my Son lives near here, so thats a tremendous plus.
Glad your Aunts are settled and happy.
May 20, 2021
I have thought that insurance should be the answer to care home costs. Whilst I don’t have Parkinsons, MS, dementia or any other condition likely to mean I have to go into a care home for a long time, I should be able to take out an insurance that covers the costs should I need it.
The snag with such a scheme is that as soon as it’s implemented, the incentive to restrain care home costs goes. Care homes would like to increase charges because they want more profits. There are also the upward drivers on costs through increased property costs, higher wages and inflation. Government action to increase bureaucracy costs in the name of improving standards and a voracious appetite for more tax also increases costs, but there is no incentive to restrain them. If there was an insurance policy available, the care homes will just swallow that and demand more.
I do wonder if there should be a new law to ringfence the tax free portion of a pension fund for care home costs purposes.
I might take out a policy today, but should I need to rely on it, I might well find costs have doubled. I doubt there would be an inflation proof policy available, so I will be expected to pay the difference. What happens then if I can’t afford the additional amount?
May 20, 2021
@Dave Andrews
“I do wonder if there should be a new law to ringfence the tax free portion of a pension fund for care home costs purposes.”
I think that may be a little draconian, but you may be onto something.
Pension schemes are generally “sold” on the basis of their tax reliefs. In reality, they are perhaps a tax deferral, although there is often a mismatch between the rate of income tax relief on the contributions and the rate of income tax charged on the pension, when paid. One such mismatch is the tax free lump sum. Maybe part of the care cost solution would be to phase out the tax free lump sum over a period of years. This would mean that the individual would receive a higher (taxable) pension. The higher pension would help with any care costs of that individual and the extra tax would help the Exchequer.
Another mismatch might be the extent to which an individual’s pension contributions qualify for income tax relief at a higher rate whereas the pension, when drawn, is taxed (wholly or partly) at basic rate. The other way around is perhaps rare. Maybe a solution would be to limit income tax relief on pension contributions to basic rate and then to tax pensions, when drawn, also at basic rate. The Exchequer would have a cashflow advantage in that there would be lower income tax relief/higher tax receipts now but lower income tax receipts in future. Higher/additional rate pensioners would then pay less income tax and would receive higher net pensions, which would help with any care costs. The Exchequer might not be entirely happy with this to the extent that the loss of future tax revenue is greater than additional tax receipts now.
To further assist the Exchequer, such a change might go hand in hand with limiting income tax relief for other payments, to basic rate only. This has already been done for certain interest payments as owners of buy to let properties will know. Another candidate for such a change is charitable gift aided donations where, currently, the net cost of a donation is substantially reduced for a higher/additional rate income tax payer.
May 21, 2021
Oldwulf,if you are already retired are you reliant on a private pension or do you have a defined benefit pension? Did you enjoy a tax-free lump sum? I’d like to understand your position when suggesting higher taxation on anyone who has saved in schemes on the rules in place.
May 21, 2021
a-tracy
I am retired. Sadly, I do not have a defined benefit pension (although my daughter contributes to one).
I draw a private pension which was set up in the early 1980s. I did not draw a tax free lump sum. I was advised that the annuity rate which was attached to the policy, was possibly the better option, although that depends on how long I decide to live.
May 21, 2021
Well oldwulf, I wish you a long and happy retirement. Some people I know took the lump sum to pay off the mortgage because endowment policies fell short or to pay off big debts on credit cards to reduce their monthly interest payments. I wouldn’t want to stop people from having that option to be big debt-free in retirement. Retrospective changes in pension entitlements repulse me because people don’t have sufficient changes at that time of their lives to make alternative choices.
May 21, 2021
a-tracy
Thank you.
Maybe phasing out the tax free lump sum even at the rate of 1% per annum over 25 years would still cause problems for some. Perhaps an alternative might be to remove it for all new pension policies or increases to existing policies?
May 20, 2021
GB News will smash the BBC’s biased, Left-wing hegemony
Andrew Neil’s insurgent new TV news channel has more chance of succeeding than its critics believe – says Allister Heath today. I hope so but rather doubt it will. This as the BBC is a clearly a blatant left wing, woke, climate alarmist propaganda organisation and is much valued by the current highly socialist, green crap, woke government.
Radio 4’s PM’s main “news” story yesterday seemed to be that someone called Demi Lovato is now non-binary and is changing their”?” pronouns to they/them. Were the BBC paid for this absurd self publicity advert?
May 20, 2021
Neil is controlled opposition. Don’t build your hopes up.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
@LL; The hard left print media said much the same about RT…
May 20, 2021
I note that everything silly or reprehensible done by the Right suddenly becomes “left wing” according to you.
How convenient.
It is a matter of urgency to their media, that whenever some self-fixated tiny minority succeeds in drawing attention to whatever demand of theirs, the Tory media rush off to ask a prominent Labour figure what they think of it, and plaster that all over the front pages.
Whereas Labour would in fact rather discuss how to get better pay and conditions for the privatised bin men and women.
May 21, 2021
What is wrong with the pay and conditions of the privatised bin men and women? Please explain what you know of the matter. Contracts given by Local Authorities financed by us council tax payers matter!
May 20, 2021
There is apartheid in the social care system whereby those who are prudent lose everything and the ones who aren’t get 100% from the taxpayer.
Why are care homes allowed to charge £100 a week more for self funded than what the council pays.
In any other context this would be discrimination and banned.
Care is a lottery.
May 20, 2021
Ian Wragg; “Why are care homes allowed to charge £100 a week more for self funded than what the council pays.”
Welcome to the free market, I though the right wing were against price controls, good for the DHSC/NHS if they have negotiated a discount (based on quantity or whatever)…
Also the person who is getting 100% funded care is simply getting payout on the National Insurance scheme they paid into, it is their money just as much as anyone else’s, just like any insurance cover (that doesn’t have a ‘voluntary’ excess clause).
May 20, 2021
That is the conundrum. Those who have saved and gained assets through hard work, pay for the feckless and idle or those who haven’t bothered to set aside savings. With no right of centre Government nothing will change and they’ll keep putting the ever rising costs on our Council Tax with no blame on them as the Council’s are forced to collect it. 5% rise in Council tax this year whilst CPI inflation was 0.75%, driving all of us into poverty. My Lib Dum Council is more concerned with the climate change emergency……..really? Look outside.
May 20, 2021
@Timaction; Do you have to be so rude? Those “feckless and idle” or “those who haven’t bothered to set aside savings” might never have been in any position to be thoughtful, whilst those in what would now be called zero-hours and NMW jobs could well have worked hard and longer hours for 40-50 years but still not have any money to set aside, whilst some who did all you suggest could still have had an uninsured accident or injury later in life, the aftermath of which consumed any such savings.
May 20, 2021
Socialism is ok until you run out of…..other peoples money. Everyone can plan. They chose not to.
May 21, 2021
@Timaction; The same is true of Capitalism, until other peoples (shareholders/customers) money runs out, sometimes even the banks loose out in the liquidation.
“Everyone can plan. They chose not to.”
Everyone can also find a clue or two…
If you have a fixed amount of disposable money, after rent, Council Tax, utility bills etc, and thus have a choice between eating a meal or paying for additional -future- health/care insurance, which one do you think most people would choose – how about taking that shiny spoon out of your mouth for once!
May 20, 2021
Again, you and other politicians make the distinction between those with assets and those without and decide that those with assets should be stripped Sir John.
Universal credit demands that you spend all your savings before receiving any benefit, child benefit is withdrawn from the “rich” with no allowance for location costs and social care accommodation is chargeable tot hose who are able to pay but free to those who can’t.
No nuance, no accounting for scrimping and saving vs fecklessness just a doctrine that if government can take money from an individual it will. Where is the encouragement for aspiration. Whenever I discuss pensions with my peers, I ask them why they bother inconveniencing themselves now when the government will have to provide for them in their dotage if they have nothing.
There should be basic accommodation and care provided to all by the taxpayer which can be supplemented for a fee. Insurance should be available during everyone’s working life to aid this supplementation. Insurance companies are rather good at pricing risk.
May 20, 2021
NS, what do you think the percentages are, I really wonder –
What % of the retired population in each region rely 100% on housing benefit, pension credits? How much does this cost each region? There was a big hue and cry from the Labour Party about the surplus room payment – basically a scheme to try to persuade pensioners supported with housing benefits to move out of HA/Council family multi bedroomed homes into retirement homes to reduce the costs of their rent/rates – just as many private home pensioners had to downsize as their council taxes started crippling them.
What % don’t claim pension credits, live in their owned homes, and live off their savings that are over £23,250, and mainly live on their state pension earnings and small private pensions living on less than £12,570 pa?
What % are on safe final salary pensions, have paid off their home, and have savings over £23,250 in England (and once again Wales and Scottish pensioners have higher allowances to pass on!).
It seems that it is only private homeowners that they want to pay twice, thrice and quadruple times for themselves and anyone else that gets under the umbrella gets protected.
May 20, 2021
I don’t think there should be an increase in the amount of allowed retained property capital / savings for inheritance purposes when someone needs residential care. There is surely a case for a piece of high quality research commissioned by the govern into how other countries tackle this, which would highlight good practice and therefore help enable the government to drive reform. Such research would have to be carried out by a consultancy with no axe to grind and no vested interests. One outcome would surely be to identify a need for an element of obligatory personal insurance for future care costs, which applies in other countries but which is resisted here by those who assume higher taxation is the only answer.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
@MPC; Your comment appears to be an insurance industry answer looking for a problem, with a sack full of right wing dogma for good measure!
If the State is going to mandate a minimum purchase of private insurance to cover future care costs why not simply mandate the same people to pay higher NICs. Also, with the number of problems within the private pension, health care and banking sectors over the last 25 years or so how can we be sure our money, our cover, will be safe in the private sector?
May 21, 2021
What was “a sackful of right wing dogma” in MPC’s post?
May 21, 2021
@Peter2; The comment about higher taxation.
May 21, 2021
So you think higher taxation is the only answer?
May 22, 2021
@Peter2; Still on your contrary (t)roll then… I did not say higher taxation is the only answer, any more than you’ve said lower taxes are the only answer, I merely pointed out that taxation policy is political.
May 22, 2021
So Jerry a sackful of right wing dogma turns out to be just a suggestion by MPC to look at an insurance scheme to help fund care costs.
The reason you get so stroppy when challenged is your comments fail under scrutiny.
You go on about debate but actually you hate debate.
May 23, 2021
@Peter2; You seem to think money taken by the govt from your right hand is not the same money if taken from your left, how naive….
How is a “National Insurance scheme”, different from a State mandated compulsory “Private Health Insurance” scheme, both having the minimum contribution set by the govt of the day? I hope you never describe the TVL fee as a Tax…
May 23, 2021
National Insurance mainly pays for pensions, sick pay and maternity pay Jerry.
The majority of money for the NHS comes from general taxation.
A separate insurance scheme by employers for their employees would reduce demand on the NHS and help reduce waiting lists.
I’m assuming you want the UK health system to rise from 15th in the world to number one in the world Jerry as I do?
May 20, 2021
A compulsory insurance scheme is probably the way to go, with an option for state provision at some basic cost. Under no circs should the govt accept the argument that poorer people should pay more tax so richer peoples’ inheritances can be protected.
May 20, 2021
Richard1 I agree with your last sentence but ‘compulsory’ insurance, really? Surely it is up to me knowing that my house could be used for my care to take out insurance or not bother and lose the kid’s inheritance.
May 20, 2021
@Richard1; We already have a compulsory insurance scheme, well as close to as any compulsory scheme can be, it is called “Nutritional Insurance”, paid for via NICs and the general taxation pot. Any mandated scheme also needs a safety net, funded by the scheme or industry, to protect the many who have simply not been able to afford to pay into such a fund, NI does all of this already, why re-invent the wheel?
May 23, 2021
National Insurance doesn’t pay for the majority of NHS funding.
Come on Jerry.
Get your facts right.
May 20, 2021
It needs to be possible to pass on to loved ones at least a moderate part of savings as a result of going into care; otherwise, there is no incentive to save, and thrift has no reward. This aspect of the funding of social care needs to be resolved.
May 20, 2021
As everyone rightly says elderly care is a complex issue.
I’m not in a position to make judgments because I simply don’t know enough about this subject.
What I do know is that we probably need to start by focusing on the relationship between NHS hospitals and the care sector. There are many reports of so called bed blocking when elderly people cannot be moved out of hospitals because there is no meaningful support for their specific needs.
Elderly people generally do have more medical needs so the starting point for any review needs to be the relationship between care homes and NHS both doctors and hospitals.
I’m not qualified either by reading reports or research to make a further contribution to today’s very important yet complex topic.
May 20, 2021
Many of the bed-blocking and repeat admittance to hospital problems could be resolved by re-introducing variants of efficient convalescent care.
For some reason, over at least the past 30 years, the NHS does not see short-term aftercare as a way of reducing extended demand on its services.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 21, 2021
Very enlightening.
May 20, 2021
This sounds like an argument between having a large expanding socialist state, against a state that minimalizes intervention in people’s lives by empowering them.
We can see from recent events that people do not do well when told how to live their lives with restrictions and indoctrination by mass media, but this is how big government works.
If this is the sort of world we want then we should just let the labour party dictate everything for us, from birth to death – What fair wages would be – what kind of housing we could live in – what level of care we can expect for whatever problems we have, and indeed how much they would give us back from our taxes, if anything.
That is not the kind of world I want, nor is it sustainable, but that is where high spending high taxing socialist solutions take us.
I really do not think we should expand social care spending We are already overtaxed and disenfranchised from big government. It is quality of life for all that we should be thinking about and no social programs are going to achieve anything but a survival level quality of life.
Should we ever be free of the politics of this pandemic, and the great reset doesn’t happen as planned, then we need to do something as a nation.
We need to understand, and discuss, what it is we want out of life — Do we want to care decently for those unable to look after themselves, then let’s create a system that provides for them without penalizing others.
Do we want to throw lives, talent and expertise away just because they have reached a certain age?
Do we really want to continue with the idea that when our elderly get too old to move around well that it is the state’s problem?
There are so many situations that we need to logically address before we start dishing out more resources without being able to do it all a lot better, with more humanity, and far less socialism.
May 20, 2021
+10
May 20, 2021
This is disappointing. You are focusing on financial aspects of care in care homes but “social care” covers a much wider range of support than that and the real issues are not simply money. How will social care for a person operate appropriately and effectively over 70 years and not just 5-10. The church and community used to be the stable factor across generations, what will take their place now?
And then there is the important dimension of how care could be improved given our aging populations. Here I am talking about solutions which do involve the social aspect which needs more attention with the decline role of the church, but will need more STEM development to address.
EG There is clearly an urgent need to address access to medical services as highlighted by the withdrawal of GP and hospital services over the last year. Aspects of this could be addressed through technology so what are government plans and how will this exploit partnership with the private sector?
May 20, 2021
Why should I propose anything social care related when in July 2020 Boris Johnson becoming PM told us he had an oven-ready plan? Has there not been a Dilnot Commission on Social Care in 2010? And a 11 July 2012 DHSC report on gov.uk about ‘Social Care Funding Reform’?
So what are you exactly trying to do today Sir John? Giving the impression you care?
May 20, 2021
There is no universally satisfactory answer to a problem largely caused by a moral dilemma: medical science can keep far greater numbers of us alive for far longer than ever before, but it cannot keep us all physically and mentally healthy and active until the moment we drop dead.
It is all very well saying ‘family’ should look after those needing care – what about those who have absolutely no family? Or whose family have emigrated to another Continent? Some of us have also experienced being the ‘sandwich generation’: our children want/need us to be active grandparents, while we have to care for our parents now in their 80s and 90s, yet at the same time we are beginning to be beset by our own health problems.
Personally, I believe that having to use your own assets (cash or property) should, with certain provisos, to pay for your care is entirely correct.
May 20, 2021
Morning John,
“I also wish to see decent standards of accommodation and catering. Where someone is supported by taxpayer money for the living costs in a Care Home the budget should be sufficiently generous to provide a decent standard and good pay for the Care workers”
No such thing as tax payer money John just look at the government accounts and the front of every note beside that signature. If there are not enough skills and real resources available to provide the care and you just throw money at it then you’ll get inflation. Then taxes could rise. Same goes for tax cuts and bank lending.
The cost, the real cost and what’s called ‘real terms versus nominal terms. The real tax is paid when the government spends and that person is moved from the private to public domain. When the government buys a screwdriver, that screwdriver now goes from private to public domain. When the government buys cars or airplanes, all that labour and everything else that went into it, instead of being used for private sector, has been moved to the public sector. So the real tax is paid, when the government spends, not when it taxes. If the government is transferring more resources by buying things from the private sector to the public sector, that’s a loss to the private sector.
is it an overall gain to society? That is a political question not a funding question. As long as the skills and real resources are available funding is not an issue.
We are happy to move people from private to public to provide an army, police, teachers, nurses, doctors, etc . So the only question is are we happy to do so for social care ?
May 20, 2021
Wokingham council tax bills have a adult social care precept of 9%. So on top of what Wokingham borough charges for ‘services’, which as far as I can see is putting speed bumps in between pot holes in the road to make the roads nicely sinusoidal, and getting us to sort all our household waste into more and more containers, we also have to pay for rent seeking adult social care.
As a tax payer, I would like the adult social care tax to be removed. I don’t want to fund adult social care for other people. If people want to socialise adult social care costs, find some other expensive government project to cancel and use that money: Track and trace, HS2; there is enough wastage and fat in government to fund social care without increasing costs to the tax payer.
May 20, 2021
Hi Aaron,
Hope you are well.
Think of a stone skipping across a pond with taxation as the ripple. A smooth stone is low taxation and a rough stone is high taxation. The force you throw the stone is government spending. All that changes is the number of hops (transactions) before all the force gets absorbed in taxation.
“Wokingham council tax bills have a adult social care precept of 9%”
Is a work of fiction. Where in earth did you get your £’s from that allowed you to pay your council tax. It is written in the front of every note beside the signature.
For any given tax rate the MONOPOLY issuer of the £ will get back 100% of government spending back as tax – eventually. What delays it is the amount people choose to save rather than spend their income = budget deficit.
That saving ends up in the banking system, which ends up as deposits at the Bank of England (that’s what ‘bank reserves’ are) and HM government owns the Bank of England 100%.
In reality pretty much whatever the tax rate, about 90% of government spending is taxed as it flows through the economy, and about 10% ends up as additional private sector savings. The tax rate and how much people save decides the speed of that outcome.
The whole concept of the Laffer curve is based upon an incorrect mental model of how tax works.
Government spending comes first each and every time and as John said a few days ago always as new money. Tax is a geometric progression, not a simple sum. Your spending is my income less tax. My spending is your income less tax and the spending flows and then tax collection begins.
Even the Romans knew they had to spend the coins into existence before anybody in Gaul could get their hands on the coins to pay their taxes.
May 21, 2021
Amazing economic theory there Derek.
Money isn’t real
Taxes aren’t real.
Governments can’t go bankrupt.
We don’t need to pay taxes to the Government
You can create zero unemployment just by saying the words jobs guarantee.
You can endlessly create magic money without any reaction.
Have you looked at economic history?
May 21, 2021
I am paying £134 for Social Care on my Council Tax bill, which I don’t mind so much.
However, I an incensed at having to pay £189 for a Police & Crime Commissioner. What a waste of money that is, andI am far from sure that it is a useful way to spend my hard earned money.
Reply You get a police force as well for that.
May 20, 2021
It is just not the cost of care for the aging population it is the number of recipients from birth to old age. It is not just the caring side it is all the other spin offs they get offered.
The taxpayer, council tax and vat payer can only generate so much revenue and there is just not enough to go round. As hard as previous governments have tried they cannot ignore the obvious. Where you have 2nd 3rd generation unemployed, single parents with 12 children to name two there has to be something introduced to break the money for nothing cycle. Too much control of the social services budget which is the LAs largest outlay is too influenced by left wing ideals and ideas.
May 20, 2021
Re: ‘recipients from birth to old age’. My daughter is through no fault of her own in this category, she has numerous co-morbidities and also Autism. I have fought tooth and nail to get some support packages in place and established before I ‘pop my clogs’. I know my daughter will not live long after me, but would like to hope that there is some positive support for her to make her life bearable until that time.
May 20, 2021
I don’t think Turbo was talking about the deserving like your daughter. I think he was referring to those that treat parenthood as a means of having an easy life where more children mean bigger houses and more money. I have seen it first hand too many times. Nobody thinks genuine disabled people should be discriminated against.
May 21, 2021
No, I didn’t think so either. What annoys me is that people like my daughter have to fight for a little support, whilst those mentioned appear to get it handed to them on a platter.
In Social care psychology, understanding the difference between the “deserving and the undeserving” is seriously flawed.
May 20, 2021
Great performance this morning by the Israeli Ambassador on Sky. No nuancing, why should Israel have to tolerate terrorism, just because she is a lone democratic country surrounded by (hostile states ed).
May 20, 2021
What about reviving Dilnot’s ‘Funding for Care and Support’, with the relevant legislation as it had been passed by Parliament in 2013, and approved by the Queen in 2015? Or are we to see this again kicked into the long grass for the next ten years?
May 20, 2021
It might just be better to worry about giving us all our bl**dy lives back!
Many “Care” Homes were chased out of existence by legislation! Expensive lifts and hygiene requirements etc.
Also by the socialist imperative for the better, more expensive homes to take in people being paid for by the state, some of whom should have been in a secure unit of some sort.
I saw several genteel, happy residences ruined in this way and now they have gone out of business..
All these problems have been caused by governments. Greedy for power and other people’s money.
Anxious to harm, hurt and humiliate.
May 20, 2021
In any case I believe that the greedy city is eyeing up “Care” homes.
They are now deemed, having been brought to their knees by regulation, to be a “broken model” and should thus be nationalised ( fire sale for the boys) or taken over by the NHS!! Great!
Return of the workhouse!
The truth is that there is a lot of money in caring for the elderly, and as ever, with govt. support, it must be siphoned off.
May 20, 2021
There are several trillion quid’s worth of equity in the homes of mostly old people.
The Tories very much want a nice wodge of that for their chums, I’d assume.
And they’d not like to see the younger generation made less precarious by inheriting that either, whatever John says.
May 20, 2021
Agree 100%
May 21, 2021
so lets confiscate all wealth, demolish detached houses and build back better rows of identical basic boxes as homes -but with adequate windows for those curtain twitchers. A tiny kitchen for dealing with the wet lettuce and compulsory voting for The Party.
May 21, 2021
MiC
Labour, Lib Dems and Greens have the same policies on IHT and care home costs.
Some even more punitive.
May 21, 2021
IHT does not transfer wealth to the private sector – until the Tories splash out on test and trace which doesn’t work etc., that is.
The mechanism for doing that is private care.
The “cap” is in essence a poll tax on age and infirmity, which often deprives those of modest means of their whole estate.
May 21, 2021
MiC have you seen the website NHS Data Statistics that zoom down into every ward, how many covid cases there are? They are getting good at collating the information of people. The test part of the service was fantastic, even you must appreciate that the pure numbers of people tested for free in the UK compared to other countries, all the free tests people can get now.
The tracking side. It will come out in the investigation just what caused the problems and I suspect it was people that had covid that weren’t all being honest when they got the call.
May 21, 2021
Very odd theory MiC
IHT develops billions which fund public spending.
Your favourite party wants to increase it.
Tell us where you would get the money from?
May 20, 2021
Throughout our life we face the need to make choices. Sometimes those choices involve assessing a risk, a risk of accidents involving damage or injury to our property or person. Some of us chose to arrange insurance, others chose not to. If my home is damaged by fire, I do not expect the Taxpayer to repair my house because I chose not to take out insurance.
The same attitude should be taken to social care but I do not propose that we should create another market for insurance companies.
A voluntary scheme, similar in some ways to NI, should be set up by the Government.
It would be based on the idea that the ‘Insured’ would pay premiums based on ‘units’ of cost of care. In other words, the premium would be based on an expected level of payout and that link could be periodically reviewed against the affect of inflation of social care costs. It would be entirely voluntary and could be paid directly by the insured via Direct Debit or perhaps an arrangement with the insured’s employer and HMRC to be deducted from pay. People who cannot afford to cover the premiums and who are unlikely to have assets to cover the cost of social care would, after means testing, have their need covered by the benefit system.
Claims could be made for Social Care only and could be payable to to the claimant or the provider as appropriate. Premiums paid to the Government would be ring-fenced and could only be used to invest in social care infrastructure, provision or purchase.
This scheme would present people with a free choice between insurance or covering the liabilities from their own assets. It would be a relatively small burden on the Taxpayer to cover administration costs.
It could be overseen by The Department of Health and Social Care and claims would require their approval after consultation with the claimants GP.
This would not be a perfect system (I do not think that the perfect system exists) but it would give people something they do not have at the moment, a choice to cover a future risk. It would give the Government an income stream to contribute to the cost of a social care service.
May 21, 2021
Perhaps the voluntary schemes could buy care homes to run and keep the profit in the sector. Co-ops with unknown owners and overpaid board members seems to be the preferred option of the left at the moment.
May 22, 2021
Last figures I found (Inheritance Tax statistics on gov.uk) were for the tax year 2017-18. In that tax year only 3.9% of UK deaths led to IHT and that gave £5.2bn to the Treasury, some 8% more than in the previous tax year. 51% of these were from estates in London and the South East.
From the roughly 600,000 deaths on an average year, 20,200 estates used the Residence Nil Rate Band of £325k to decrease their potential IHT in 2017-18.
Which (if I am not mixing things up) means that the 3.9% represent these 20,200 estates, paying an average of £257k in IHT.
A nice little earner for the Treasury and likely to increase as the £325k threshold has not been modified since 2009 … And an incentive not to delay putting ‘one’s affairs’ in order and not to wait to ‘the last minute’ to do so, given that in the Wokingham area the average price of a property is now £498k.
Another way to look at such figures is to say that selling such an average property would cover roughly 10 years of a residential care home in the Wokingham area.
May 20, 2021
The danger is in over thinking this, and as usual making it over complicated.
The simple fact is that all health care in the UK is free at the point of use, so the health cost is covered full stop.
The Government tell us the State pension is supposed to be enough to live on, in a basic manner, so the simple solution is to use a persons State Pension to pay for the accommodation and food, in exchange for that State pension less very a small sum (say £20.00 per week) for spending on personal incidentals etc.
Result a very simple solution and fair to all parties.
Those who have assets will still pay tax on the investments and or income, those who still retain properties will still pay council tax on them, those who sell or rent their homes will help the housing crisis, those who eventually pass away will pay inheritance tax (threshold much too low).
Will never happen as it’s too simple a solution.
May 20, 2021
Just to add to the above suggestion, all State Benefits for any individual as well as the State pension should also be withdrawn.
The State should not be giving any financial aid/benefits to someone who is living in a nursing home and being looked after completely, at the sole expense of the State.
May 20, 2021
Alan, state pensions payout £9350 pa and residential care homes seem to charge £44,000 pa or £120 per day. I couldn’t believe that cost.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
A whole mixture of situations therefore questions posed with this as it is many other similar issues.
It starts with is the person looking back in the mirror, is that the one that is responsible for ones well being, then should this extend to the immediate family that they and they alone brought into the world, or is that the State , exclusively a State Problem, therefore the taxpayer that is responsible. Does/has a one size fit all State approach ever worked in all situations.
Where the Government of the Day is directly responsible, history has shown their desire to fix everything with the World’s Biggest Ponzi scheme. If you or I were to create and run one of these we would have been locked up years ago. Some how(and I don’t know how) there has to be a break in the ‘Ponzi’ syndrome and a return to invest and insure. The current practise will always cause as we are seeing diminishing returns and a greater long term problem for the whole of society
Compulsory NHI and its purpose defined would be a better vehicle than dumping things on general taxation as that is subject to external flows and political whims. You could reason that some of the core elements will always be derived from general taxation, but the bulk should be from an NHI pot that relates to contributions. By that I don’t mean those that have paid more get more, I mean as individuals we should know we have created a pot for those life time emergencies that is out of reach of the State and their ever changing political nuances.
Ones own personal and family health and wealth is a life time project, even with a 50year working life cycle you should never be forced to trust a Politician to do what is the right thing for you. No one knows what their make up will be tomorrow. Did anyone expect just one year ago the Government of the day was going to steal a whole generations future, its livelihood, on some big world ‘Great-Reset’ , of World Government and plunge us into a so-called un-realistic, un-thought out ‘green culture’. It wasn’t in their manifesto – so how could anyone then trust the State, the Government, a Politician with anything as important as your health, your well being and social care !
May 20, 2021
A relation of my partner’s went into a Care Home with good funds owing to careful saving and modest lifestyle. Unfortunately for her she lived on for many years with deteriorating health. At the point her funds were exhausted and the local authority (taxpayer) had to pay, the standard of care and accommodation plummeted and her last few years were more miserable and upsetting for her loved ones than they should have been. How can I avoid putting this on my family as I age?
May 20, 2021
On reading the comments here and replying to all of them. The UK taxpayer is burdened more than most with an unfair and unequal system.
There is an endless list of new proposals on the cards that in every instance the taxpayer must pay more and therefore will have less of their own money. As has been said in many different ways in recent days it is mission creep, create an empire, bribe people with their own money. Value for money and whether anything is actual needed, doesn’t come into it. It comes over pure look at me vanity from Downing Street – I can jump to the MsM tune, I can respond to the noisy metro left. The UK – who cares!
Reduce taxes, then reduce them some more, then when that is done bring them down another notch. Remove the burden of the state, get rid of the HoL, reduce the HoC. Then when you stand back the Whole of the UK will flourish
May 20, 2021
Most of us will have had some experience of the present dysfunctional system of so called Social care, Care at Home, and Nursing Homes of some sort.
A sorry mixture of so called care ,which is also complicated by a whole mixture of:
Who is actually responsible for provision, management, a Care Plan, who pays, with complicated financial and medical assessments added to the mix.
At present it involves Government, NHS, Local Authorities, GP’s, private sector companies and individual responsibility.
Further complications involve different rules in different areas, not only for Health Care but Local Authorities as well.
John is it any wonder the whole thing needs a simple resolution, we are supposed to have a National Health Service with surely the same rules for all (but we do not).
Local Authorities should surely also have the same rules throughout the country as far as Social care is concerned at the very least, but they do not.
Yes my parents and other family members have had care packages at home, have been in Nursing homes and Hospices before eventually passing away, so I have first hand experience of a very, very dysfunctional system.
I could go on and on, but then this would be held in moderation for ever, so I will leave it there.
See my earlier post for a simple solution.
May 20, 2021
Hospitals, GPs, Dentist and Social Care should all come under the NHS, funded by the NHS and employed by the NHS
Devolved arrangements should be reverted to make the NHS a UK domain and truly national
It’s a shame on all governments the way social care has been treated as second class throughout the decades….e.g. we could build up our social care on the vast amount of empty/ unused space in hospitals grounds
May 20, 2021
Glen Cullen
“Devolved arrangements should be reverted to make the NHS a UK domain and truly national”
I don’t usually disagree with you Glen, but have to in this case.
I don’t think we should be paying any money or resource to NHS Scotland, considering the anti-English vitriol and threats we get from their ungrateful little ‘government’.
No, let them have their own NHS and let them fund it with their own money.
May 20, 2021
I am an old-fashioned soul. I take the view that state support is a last resort, not an inalienable right. If at all possible I consider I should support myself and my family and not cast the burden of my support on my fellow citizens. Nor do I think it right that people on modest incomes should pay tax so that my children can have an inheritance. An inheritance is a bonus. Therefore if I no longer need my home it should be sold to fund my care. As noted, the vast majority of people only need a care home for a relatively short period of time. There is a debate to be had about what level of capital a person should be allowed before the state steps in. The same applies to income. Care home residents must be left with sufficient to purchase every day essentials and treats. But the fundamental principle should always be, if you can afford it you should pay for it. The state must and should pay provide a safety net.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
There is no incentive for people to finance and look after themselves rather than go down the “bookies” and blow everything on the horses and let the state pickup the tab.
Add to that the split responsibility between council social services and the NHS (who will always push back against taking responsibility and costs involved).
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
Anyone in govt worked out how the NHS/etc is going to care for the hundreds of thousands of migrants who are coming, who can walk into hospitals and get translators, treatment and prescriptions – for nothing. While their taxpayer funded translators take up the staff’s time – what do we, the English born and bred, English speaking taxpayer get – -we get put at the back of the queue, while our taxes pay for it all. Discrimination against us is rife and plain to see.
Add on their housing, continued benefits for years, continued translators, schooling for their multiple offspring etc etc – We are on the road to disaster and extermination – and the govt has the “pedal to the metal”.
May 20, 2021
My feeling is that the government should only look after the disabled and destitute. For the remainder of people this is a personal and family responsibility and nothing to do with government.
May 20, 2021
Kenneth
Society and ‘the system’ have failed. Things like mass consumerism and I’m alright Jack have rotted society to the core. Things aint what they used to be.
Nobody looks out for anybody these days, and most people willingly turn a blind eye to someone down on their luck.
Capitalism at it’s finest.
May 20, 2021
Kenneth
Just like it is in Spain. Family responsibility and not just in the twilight years but throughout life.
May 20, 2021
1. Don’t play party politics with care. It’s too important.
2. Care is care whether it’s funded by the individual in need of care, the NHS or the Local Authority.
3. Dump the word ‘social’. Concentrate on beefing up ‘care’ and the quality of care. Don’t forget about care provided in someone’s own home. Beef that up too.
4. Remember the case of Pam Coughlan from 1970s. Look closely at the ‘Coughlan Test’. All care is nursing. Nobody chooses to move into a residential care home for fun – it’s the need for care that dictates the need to move.
5. Remove the ‘retainer fee’ paid to GPs to visit care homes ‘at their convenience’.
6. Privately funded residents should not subsidise those whose care is not self-funded. Not everyone whose care is local authority funded has been feckless, reckless or irresponsible during their life before they needed care.
7. Look closely at the fees charged for often sub-standard care. £2000 plus per week is not easy to swallow, for a tiny room in a care home with nursing, which may have only one nurse on duty on any shift, otherwise staffed by care assistants who may have little or no training, no career prospects, no real interest in the job. Even worse when life in a dull and boring care home is not a life worth living.
8. Create a career structure for care assistants, make it attractive so that working as a care assistant is valued and attracts and retains the right people.
9. Look closely at all those ‘delayed discharges’ from hospital and the reasons behind them.
10. It should not take a pandemic for us to appreciate care workers.
May 20, 2021
PS to my own comment that is still awaiting moderation.
Please don’t wait until it’s too late to improve care. The PM said he had a plan ready. Show us you mean it.
May 20, 2021
JayGee
I remember well the Pam Coughlan test.
I used it and other examples to great effect when contesting 4 medical assessments made by the NHS and Local Government Social Care “Experts”on my mother, before they agreed, and she eventually gained Continuing Care status before entering a local Nursing Home.
The problem is different parts of the Country, and different Local Authorities, have different rules and criteria, which is an actual farce for a National health Service and Social care situation.
Sometimes you have to be difficult and bloody minded in order to access the correct system, the correct treatment, and the correct care.
May 20, 2021
+1
May 20, 2021
I read elsewhere that you are intending to holiday in the UK this year, avoiding going anywhere within the EU. While some protest is necessary, given the disgraceful way the UK is being treated, the reason we are avoiding Europe is principally because the restrictions, particularly mask wearing, would spoil the experience as they would for a UK holiday.
Although I am no supporter, Biden appears a lot more enlightened than any leader in Europe, having issued guidance that masks are not necessary for anyone who has been fully vaccinated. We are therefore intending to go on a touring holiday in the USA in September. Nearer the time will be choosing a State or two where that guidance has been adopted. ( Unfortunately California seems not to be interested ).
This brings me to the ludicrous position adopted by our Government. Just as they relax the rules, moving 170 countries to the Amber list, Boris and Hancock come out saying that we shouldn’t go anywhere abroad unless it is to visit a sick relative. Yet they are not prepared to enforce this by turning “guidance” into law, probably because most of their backbenchers would rightly not support it.
Like most people we are therefore intending to ignore this. Being retired, two weeks quarantining at home will be no problem to us.
May 20, 2021
Why is social care not being provided free of charge, as it is in Scotland and Wales ?
You never seem to answer this question.
Those with a full NI payment record, should not pay for old age care.
May 20, 2021
What about those years of your NI payments when life expectancy with a disease requiring care was much lower, more people cared for their elderly themselves, and care home costs were much cheaper? Were those NI payments an undercharge?
May 20, 2021
Good point
May 20, 2021
MWB
“Why is social care not being provided free of charge, as it is in Scotland and Wales ?”
…….It is not free, the English taxpayer foots the bill.
May 20, 2021
MWB
They are devolved parliaments and the money comes from the treasury pot. How they spend or waste it is solely down to their politicians. They can afford to spend our money easily as they have much smaller population to look after.
May 20, 2021
Social care is all very well.
So were JR’s nice fantasies about the uk growing and rearing more food.
However with reference to yesterday’s article…why transfer land to the young and inexperienced?
New blood says the minister.
Famine on purpose says I!
And what goes around etc. Bribes for MPs over 65 to make way for new blood?
May 20, 2021
Guardian newspaper. The class of senior civil servants has barely changed since 1967.
May 20, 2021
The class of the senior civil servants might not have changed – but their patriotism and politics have !
May 20, 2021
“Mrs May in office made proposals which proved to be very unpopular and was unable to find a compromise reform which the Opposition parties liked.”
Was Mrs May’s plan ? –
“So let me reiterate. We are proposing the right funding model for social care. We will make sure nobody has to sell their family home to pay for care. We will make sure there’s an absolute limit on what people need to pay. And you will never have to go below £100,000 of your savings, so you will always have something to pass on to your family.”
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/theresa-may-reverses-social-care-reform-plan-after-backlash
This might have a disproportionate effect on the “middle classes” ?
At the risk of stating the obvious, state funding of care will either be means tested, or it won’t. Which is it to be ?
Our host has said:
“Where someone is supported by taxpayer money for the living costs in a Care Home the budget should be sufficiently generous to provide a decent standard and good pay for the Care workers. The sums involved may well need to vary around the country as property cost is an important part of total cost and property costs are very variable. ”
This seems to imply that the state pays for a decent standard of care for everyone leaving those with access to personal money, to buy additional services. This would probably be expensive for the taxpayer and would need serious changes to the tax system and need the sacrfice of some sacred cows.
Reply Expense mainly depends on how much capital people can keep
May 20, 2021
Reply to reply
Sir – My apologies. I inferred that you implied no means test eg no confiscation of capital.
I think we all agree, the existing system is overcomplicated.
https://www.independentage.org/get-advice/support-care/paying-for-care/paying-for-care-a-care-home
May 20, 2021
There are three choices:
1) The individual pays for their own care
2) The state (ie: taxpayers) pay
3) Someone else pays, an insurer maybe.
Personally I don’t see why taxpayers should fund even more services for the elderly who are, after all, the richest and most privileged demographic in our country who already cost us a small fortune.
Pretty much half of our spending goes on these people already – and it is simply wrong to ask poor young people to subsidise rich old people AGAIN. Pay for your own care and sell your own house to pay for it. Your care is not my problem. My care is my problem and I am already saving for it.
Going forward future generations will need a long term insurance scheme as it is the only viable way for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s a day to expect care when they are old.
In the meantime the Baby Boomers have to sort themselves out. They have already pillaged the country and, frankly, should be left to deal with their own problem. If you saved or have assets – good for you. If you didn’t- tough.
May 20, 2021
andy
Put your speech in a manifesto and see how you get on.
May 20, 2021
Ah, I was wondering when yet another of your rancid and ageist comments would pop up, Andy!
May 20, 2021
People in their 30s 40s and 50’s will be just as capable as old people now. They too can sell up. We had all the same problems and financial burdens as they do today. Funny as I knew what your post would say.
May 20, 2021
Andy
” If you saved or have assets”
That’s for the generation that took out mortgages for £500 in 1960…..paid it off by 1962 and now want hundreds of thousands of pounds profit when they retire.
Such people should do the decent thing before they die and hand the property over to a young couple for £500.
May 21, 2021
Well Steve my mortgage got extended 3 times as we began a family, had to move to provide bedrooms etc eventually got a decent home instead of a tiny ‘starter’. That stupid £500 was actually the max allowed by Building Societies of the day but still took a large slice of my income to pay. No posh furniture, lavish foreign holidays, an old banger until finally getting co. car which hit my taxation. Starting it at 22 I finally paid it off at 66, but had covered our 3 children at UNI by my wife working.
Find me an acceptable replacement, would you to enable similar facilites but smaller, then the equity being released could be given to my offspring, which might amount to a holiday each – but thats it. Then the authorities will demand the little place be sold to pay for me in God’s waiting room. I had better do the decent thing and not linger so they can actually inherit something.
May 21, 2021
Steve
If they have children then that is effectively what happens when they die.
Their children inherit the family home.
May 20, 2021
Maybe I’m being a bit obtuse but I’ve never understood why this is considered such a difficult issue. Everyone is entitled to free medical care – regardless of income or savings – so why should the care you need when you are old and infirm be any different? Equally, people are free to opt for private medical care if that provided by the NHS does not satisfy them, and again, the same should apply to the elderly.
The point is that the NHS should provide free medical care, and if you cannot be adequately looked after through home visits then the cost of the food and other incidentals in a home should be taken directly from your state pension. After all, the pension is supposed to be sufficient to live on, isn’t it?
Care homes would therefore choose to either offer an NHS-approved stansard of care, for which they would be paid a flat fee by the NHS, or they would be excluded from the state sector and be private. Those offering the NHS -level care would take the cost of the food, laundry bills, etc, from their paients’ pensions. They would NOT be allowed to charge anything above this level.
As to the cost to the government, while this is able to send over £10 BILLION a year to foreign governments, and also spend BILLIONS on asylum seekers who come here, do not dare tell me that you don’t have enough money. You’ve got so much more than you need that you are, literally, giving it away!
Reply The state pension is well below atypical care home rate. The pension sum assumes you do your cooking and washing.
May 20, 2021
Reply to Reply
“The State pension is well below a typical Care Home rate” Yes it is John, but remember the Care Home rate includes Medical Care which should be free and therefore is not included in its costs..
In Wokingham the typical Care Home rate is about £1,500 per week per person.
Why does it cost this much to clean one room, clean a communal dining room, and lounge, feed one person on a multi person basis, from one kitchen with perhaps a couple of staff, and provide communal heat, light, and power from one efficient commercial system.
What do you believe the State pension should cover for the individual at home ?
Rent, food, heat, light, power, Tv licence, Council tax, clothes, maintenance of appliances, and a bit of personal spending money.
Why then is the State pension so low, or the Care home figure so high, because the differences in cost is staggering. ?
Most people think the State Pension should cover the basic cost of living/seviving with some sort of roof over your head.
Reply It’s staff costs. The rest of us do not have a cook, a live in cleaner, a home manager etc
May 20, 2021
Reply to reply
Sorry John it is not simply down to staff costs, as staff are shared between all of the residents, not just one resident, and the pay even in Wokingham is actually quite minimal per hour, and at night few are actually on duty.
reply Staff cost is the main issue. On 8 hour shifts you need three people to cover one day Plus holiday and sick leave cover. Running a care home is expensive to do well.
May 21, 2021
reply to reply….No Care Homes have the same staffing overnight as required during the day, usually a minimal skeleton.
May 21, 2021
Reply – reply
Just shows how much partner carers are saving the NHS, State given the pittance they are given for 24 hour responsibility.
May 20, 2021
X- Tory
“The point is that the NHS should provide free medical care”
And all those dentists driving around in expensive german cars and living in big expensive houses should have it taken off them and be stopped from making obscene profit from other people’s pain.
May 20, 2021
Sir John,
This is a very difficult and emotive problem to sort out. Again, we need a grown up sensible debate as to what exactly we want to happen and how to pay for it. Party politics must be put on hold during any such conversation.
It is not just elderly people who may need care, many young people too.
Care can take many forms and not just nursing homes and care homes, many people need care in their own home and others live in supported housing.
Care is expensive, be that in your own home or in a nursing home. I wonder if the state could pay a family member to stay at home to look after their relative. The rate would need to be at least at the level of a living wage for forty hours. I suspect many people would be prepared to take care of a relative but the loss of vital income is what makes it currently impractical.
I don’t know what percentage of people require care, but there must be fewer who do than don’t and therefore, some kind of insurance like NI may be the answer. This money would need to be ring fenced with any surplus put into a separate fund.
This problem can only be solved if there is a political will to solve it.
May 20, 2021
The easiest solution to the social care problem is the one that MPs, collectively, wouldn’t dare consider: taking the money out of the foreign aid budget.
May 20, 2021
Fully agree
May 21, 2021
but that would affect their Space programme, their ability to buy American fast jets, their nuclear armed missile supply, their leaders’ Swiss bank account holdings….
May 20, 2021
I’m sure “The Great Reset” has a helpful para, subsection to advise.
May 20, 2021
I would be far more happy about the sacrifice of assets to pay for care if, instead of being confiscated by the state and co-mingled, those assets were used to pay for an annuity or other annual provision which was then used to pay for care or extras. That way, those who have saved still see a benefit from their hard work. Where the family provides care instead, they should be entitled to receive the benefits of that annuity (possibly tax-free) as they are saving the state the cost. This would encourage family care for the elderly until medically impossible.
The major improvement in quality of life (and, I will admit, a financial saving on care) would be allowing euthanasia for the terminally ill who request it and are medically confirmed to have no prospect of recovery. After watching a relative’s painful and prolonged death from cancer, it is time our policies caught up with the advance of medical science, which has progressed to the point that a decapitated body can be kept ‘alive’. This prolonged ‘survival’ something the BMA is pushing for (2012 recommendation) to provide organs for donation, despite the fact that terminal patients are not good donors and the obvious costs to the taxpayer and objections from families.
May 20, 2021
We all have costs associated with living in our homes – food, utilities etc – and logically if someone has to enter a residential care home those costs should continue to be self-funded, be that from state or private pensions. But the additional care element is what needs to be reviewed.
There are two levels of Attendance Allowance that are available to all (and not means tested) but they do not come close to meeting that cost of the care element of residential fees. My Dad who is in his nineties and still paying income tax, is a self-funder due to his previous prudent lifestyle. He has been in residential care for 6 years and now his fees are £4K/month.
I feel there needs to be recognition given to those who have not frittered their money away, in order to provide for their needs in later life. This could be done by giving a form of “tax allowance” on the care element of residential fees for those who are self-funding – be that from pensions or having had to sell their family home.
May 20, 2021
The Govt should build and run state care homes where a basic service is provided, no frills. The choice would then be you pay extra for a more luxurious accommodation in private care home, or you stick it out in military style basic state provision. Govt care homes to charge fixed fee to all, probably similar to pension entitlement which residents would no longer receive. Govt care homes to be subsidized as necessary.
May 20, 2021
My response to that comprises two words – the second of which is ‘off’.
My late grandmother ended up in a council run home in Bedfordshire many years ago. Words fail me to try and describe how bloody awful it was. We got her out of the council Stalag and into a private care home. Some time later this was raided in the early hours of the morning by the council’s social workers and the police and my grandmother was loaded into a van and moved to another home in the middle of the night. I went to see the leader of social services afterwards – and had to be restrained and removed by their security. Words fail me.
May 20, 2021
Private homes can be just as bad. Not all council homes are bad.
May 20, 2021
Peter
A sensible alternative, which needs wider discussion, and certainly “basic needs” to be properly defined, and one that dare I say involves “compassionate care” or “human rights”
Having seen first hand some of the so called care in some NHS hospitals, Food and drink left at the end of beds for people to eat and drink who cannot move their limbs, I doubt and would worry, if there would be many long stay residents.
May 21, 2021
Matron being the Boss of the ward would never have allowed it.
May 20, 2021
Good sensible post Peter.
May 20, 2021
Perhaps we should be having a closer look at how much overspending is happening in the governments budgets.
There is only so much tax the middle classes can or should pay for subsidising the elderly care system.
Not everyone needs care and a straight forward 1% on gross pay of people of a certain age say over 50 may do, only government would know what that would raise.
And more importantly be honest and straightforward about the costs so government does not give the impression it is wasting people’s money.
No one knows if they are going to need nursing care so we need to be transparent about the estimated costs.
Time for some statistics that I am sure the government has not published.
Please stop the not entitled from abroad as that is very unfair on the tax payer.
May 20, 2021
Since Sir Redwood share’s his views on social care, perhaps I can offer mine –
Council tax has a social care precept, meaning basically some of it goes toward the cost of social care. Yet, much to the shame of society in a supposed civilised nation we have people living on the streets and going hungry. There is no excuse.
May 21, 2021
Perhaps Steve, a proper investigation needs performing on homeless people, could we combine State run care homes with rooms for homeless people, often many I see are very caring, sociable people, they haven’t all got drug problems or mental health problems and perhaps giving them the responsibility to look after other people, cooking for them, cleaning, providing companionship and helping residents to eat and drink, under supervision of course could be trialled.
May 20, 2021
Government Left hand – eco3 grants for new gas boilers till 2022
Government Right hand – ban new gas boilers 2025
Same with Social Care; this governments left and right hands are doing different and competing things
May 20, 2021
Since the disparity in cost between those who eventually need long term care and those who never do is so vast and a complete lottery of nature, it seems fair that a proportion of the cost should be socialized and shared by taxpayer. I believe most MPs of all parties actually agree with that and a compromise around a certain financial limit could be reached if all-party consensus were sought
May 20, 2021
This is a massive topic. Social Care such a big umbrella – covers children and adults and pensioners. The three need breaking down into separate billing segments.
When spending is discussed it is spoken like this – ‘in real terms’ there have been cuts of 2% since 2010′. Well ‘in real terms’ how much more has been paid into Social care since 2010? Can we see the comparative because local authorities are crying out whilst Council Tax bills are rising ‘in real terms’ by big %’s and there are thousands of more houses that they’re collecting council tax from in the past ten years and regular services are being cut year after year? With social care costs often being cited as the reason why – which divisions are being cut and which have had the big increases?
May 20, 2021
I hope that Bashir and the BBC are both prosecuted for the disgraceful debacle over the Diana interview.
To deliberately fake up bank statements to mislead her brother into making an introduction was completely out of order, as was the cover up by Lord Hall and others at the top of the BBC.
They were still at it this month when the BBC delayed the broadcast of the Panorama expose to give Bashir the chance of resigning from the corporation before it was broadcast.
The reputation of the BBC has been terribly damaged by this clear descent into the kind of antics expected of the very lowest tabloid rag. One has to ask, what other kind of strokes have BBC journalists pulled when the management has been deliberately looking the other way ?
It’s not every day that the reputation of a National Institution is so thoroughly trashed.
Lord Hall must surely now resign his position as Head of the National Gallery.
May 20, 2021
Used to visit a Dementia Residential Home. One lady’s only possession in a shopping bag she carried constantly was a large framed photo of Diana. No relatives or friends.
Diana connected to and was loved by many.
Yes he should resign and do some unpaid work with the poor.
May 20, 2021
High-leverage loans burdening capital costs have been involved in several care home scandals and failures. Finding ways of preventing that financial abuse will help.
May 20, 2021
How many fit and able-bodied people do we have in the UK between the ages of 18 and 65 that are NEET and not working any hours per week at all but claiming benefits in order to live?
May 20, 2021
I recall a TV programme back in 2009 featuring Gerry Robinson, a multi-millionaire businnessman, analysing and providing help to some care homes. He was able to determine so many things that were wrong with the system and suggested how they could be corrected.
I do not know if they were implemented nor how they turned out but it proved that with the eyes, experience and expertise of a Private busineesman, steps could be taken to improve the lives of the residents and staff alike.
Perhaps that is exactly what is needed across the whole of the NHS, especially with these less-than-satisfactory Care Homes.
The PM called in the Private Sector to help with the Vaccine logistics and with the help of the specialists in the Britsh Army, it was very succesful.
Such a practice of calling upon the Private Sector experts to review the problems should be made the standard approach in future. Let’s keep that momentum going!
May 20, 2021
‘If the state does opt for a higher permitted capital amount then there will be the need for extra taxes on the rest of us to pay for this alteration to allow the inheritance. Should this line be redrawn?’
The government has to try to persuade the inheritance-crazed population that as long as their parents live, the parents’ assets belong to the parents, not to their children as some automatic right-to-be-claimed regardless of circumstances. If the elderly have to sell assets to pay the real costs of care in their old age, that is part of self-responsibility.
Conversely, those who have chosen a passive lifestyle and done nothing to accrue their own assets should be actively deterred from assuming they will get a free ride at the taxpayer’s expense, while others pay for their care in addition to paying for themselves. This blatant inequality disincentivizes effort and motivates asset concealment.
Quite how the persuasion of the first group and the deterring of the second is to be done, is well beyond my pay grade – but it needs doing.
May 20, 2021
Another one of those ‘how has he got the nerve?’ moments.
You know full well that in July 2019 Johnson said:
Was that a lie or did he mis-speak?
May 20, 2021
Despite the apparently exorbitant fees charged by care homes – and the alleged poor food and, undoubtedly, low pay for those providing the care, care homes (and care home groups) regularly go broke. It would appear they are not a licence to print money.
May 21, 2021
Anything can go broke if the owners/managers have been paying themselves wheelbarrowloads of cash.
May 21, 2021
Or if the freeholders have been charging staggering rents or leases, as Tory rentier capitalism relishes.
May 21, 2021
is there ANYTHING about life in the UK you are happy with?
May 21, 2021
Yes – Italian, French, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Indian, Nepalese, Thai and all the other brilliant restaurants.
Micropubs are often pretty good replacements for the older ones which have closed too.
I hope that they can all reopen and thrive.
I don’t think that there’s much place for the public sector in these or in hotel provision, incidentally.
May 21, 2021
Nonsense MiC
Rents are in a dynamic market.
Charge too much and you end up with empty properties and no rent money coming in.
May 21, 2021
MiC
If directors do that they can end up being surcharged and disqualified from running a company.
May 20, 2021
I also repeat what I said the last time you raised this subject John.
If a Dad builds from scratch a house with his own hands, or refurbishes from a run down shell a house, for his family, and that house is actually a physical reminder of thats dads hard work and craftsmanship…
Then having the state force the family to sell the house is extremely emotional, and a far bigger deal than most politicians realise. Its not simply a financial asset, its that families only link with their dying or dead relative. It is real mental torture to take this link away from families, and a total disincentive to present day dads to do the same.
May 21, 2021
and doesn’t this State ‘theft’ bring what were thought to be Conservative values into stark relief?
May 21, 2021
indeed
May 20, 2021
A lot of the impetus for ‘reform’ comes from the desire of sons and daughters not to lose some of their inheritance. This is not a just cause; if a person or couple live too long for their pension savings to last, the cost of the shortfall should not fall on taxpayers. Such a ‘reform’ would be regressive in that it would confer a benefit on pensioners with assets that would not be available to pensioners without assets.
There is a safety net in that there an obligation on Local Authorities to look after paupers. Let us make that effective.
The important practical point is that the nasty Stalinist monopoly that is our NHS should not get its power hungry mitts on social care. Provision of social care should continue to be the responsibility of Local Authorities but they should have access to greater funding so that they can do the job properly. An increase in Council Tax would be OK but I would prefer the introduction of two extra Council Tax bands, I and J, with taxes 2X and 4X the band H rate. If we’re going to have a property tax, let’s have a proper one and not spare the landed gentry. Also, Councils should be allowed to charge for home visits at (say) £20 per visit and perhaps allowed to offer basic at home nursing care on the same basis.
There would be a benefit to the NHS. Bed blocking in hospitals would cease to be a problem. Once it became established that Local Government had an absolute obligation to see that social care is provided, hospitals could be allowed to dump bed blockers in the head offices of local councils.
May 21, 2021
Lindsay – £20 per visit – what would that be for one hour? Or the usual rushed five minutes?
Is there a private register of police and reference checked carers that people can advertise a vacancy? Ie two 30 minute visits per day £20 to £50 depending on level of care required and location (due to travelling between appointments, then carers with slots could put forward their cv.
May 20, 2021
Two comments:-
Personally I wish to die in my own home. So I assume that means it’s care in the community that is important to me. At present as I understand it Care in the Community is run by local councils.
It should remain like that. No good reason for the NHS to be directly involved.
GP’s should be willing to make home visits to the elderly or otherwise frail. If necessary the local Care service should include taking patients to the GP’s surgery. Ambulance for necessary hospital appointments.
For heaven’s sake do not lump Care in with the NHS as the present Health Minister suggested. The NHS is badly run as it is.
Second comment.
Some people apparently want to be in a Care Home. They feel safer that way I suppose. Basically I agree with you there should NOT be a higher permitted capital to be passed on to the beneficiaries of the will.
May 20, 2021
Pauline you may be surprised to know that you do not have the right to decide.
If admitted to hospital after a say stroke, or simple ageing inability to look after yourself, or even be considered a danger to a neighbour’s property and life – then authorities will decide you cannot be returned to your home to live alone and take your chances. Care Home for you – you will pay like it or not.
May 20, 2021
The British political class haven’t got a humanitarian bone in their collective body so this expression of concern about our welfare for when we get older is mere politics.
Labour’s moral mission in 1945 was sincere with their aim to create a safety net for those who couldn’t take care of themselves. Today, that ideal’s been hijacked by dishonourable ruffians across all parties that now populate politics and use all human issues for political gain especially emotive ones like social care
They want your vote and that’s all they want.
I wonder when the Socialist Tory party will start upping taxes on income and on WEALTH. It’ll start like this. Their greasy thinktanks will produce a report with some fancy phrase like ‘Levelling up for a better future’…the usual Socialist, utopian bullshit..then lower rank Tory MPs will drop hints in interviews, in the press etc, then Tory leader writers at the DT etal will write an article praising Socialist redistribution and how evil wealth is, then their leader Josef Johnson will make some tedious speech about he’s oh so moral and humanitarian and wants to help poor little granny in her cold flat…
It’s quite simple. The Tory party has completely capitulated to Labour’s appalling authoritarian interventionism and we will all end up paying the price in higher taxes and zero freedoms
Shameless
May 21, 2021
OK, Dom. But what would you do on this topic alone?
You’ve got a situation where there are a large group of elderly people who can’t manage by themselves, I don’t know the numbers.
Three categories I can think of, do you know more?
1) Those with defined benefit final salary type pensions that cover their costs for the rest of their lives, safe in the knowledge they can spend all their savings or give them away as they choose, with assets that they can downsize from. Should the State then pay for their care to protect their earnings and assets? How can they access the care provisions privately at a reasonable cost instead of an inflated cost that pays for everyone else.
2) Those people with private pensions (that even with a £100,000 pot only buys them £3500 income pa on top of the State pension giving them £13,000 income pa) they have a small asset and have to pay nearly £2000 council tax out of their net income. Should the State then pay for their whole care package?
3) Those people with just State pension, maybe some Pension Credit, rental property that is covered by housing benefit. These people will be a full care cost to the State so how best to keep this cost down instead of the £40,000 to £50,000 cost per annum or £120 per day.
May 20, 2021
Not entirely off topic. Emily Thornberry proposes that the UK should rejoin the European Medicines Agency “to improve the efficiency” of the UK’s vaccine rollout.
Are we starting to seethe first drafts of a brand new longest suicide note in history?
May 20, 2021
NI was introduced as a levy to cover pension, NHS and out of work benefits.
So many are unable to claim out of work benefits, the NHS is now free for all, irrespective of paying NI – in fact even to foreign nationals – and the State pension is a pittance.
If the State are to continue with NI, then they should be looking after people in old age – why should we pay more tax?
Also, there is a difference between “wealth” and income, although the socialists like to conflate the two – whever there’s a discussion about wealth tax they start shifting that to income tax. People who have saved and accumulated should not be penalised while those who spent what they earned get off free.
The above article seems to mix these two aspects as well. Those who have a substantial INCOME could be asked to pay for their living costs, yes – but note that this is different from those who have ASSETS. Selling your home is very different to putting your ongoing pension income into the kitty.
The way forward is probably a compulsory scheme, perhaps funded from NI or similar which is now a tax in all but name – but it needs to start with the current young workforce not the ones who are already too old to input enough to cover the costs.
The way the government do pensions is fundamentally flawed, instead of investing as other providers do, they fund from current contributions (this is pretty much what Charles Ponzi was doing with his investment fund and we all know how well that went). They need to start doing better for both pensions and social care – charge contributions for specific purpsoes and invest it wisely.
May 20, 2021
Lockdown roadmap schedule due to end 21st June
I have to start paying back ‘bounce back loan’ 1st June
Signed by – Wish I was a Public Servant
May 20, 2021
It’s not a terribly clever idea to demolish your house because you don’t like the colour of the front door. It’s cleverer to just repaint the front door.
In the same way, some people here are ranting about denunciations of and radical change to the care and benefit system when they can’t even put into words what exactly and specifically is wrong with the current one, beyond a whole lot of angry, extravagant and incoherent language..
If you can’t say specifically what a problem is, and what specific goals are not being met, then perhaps you are just being too emotional about the whole thing. Maybe the current system isn’t a total disaster and just needs management and minor tweaks, not wholesale demolition.
May 20, 2021
We can debate the job guarentee as a solution. If we are honest about how a sovereign nation with its own free floating currency actually works free from propaganda.
Providing a job guarentee for 15 million Americans @ $ 15 an hr showed clearly that …..
a) It would permanently increase GDP by 2% = $ 500- 600 billion
b) Permanently increase private sector jobs by 3-4 million.
c) insignificant impact on inflation 0.9% in its peak
d) Permanently reduced other welfare costs
e) Reduced invisible social costs
f) improved local budgets
g) Allows the private sector to shed jobs as they improve productivity to meet demand and for workers to transition not only back into the private sector easily but also to transition between different sectors more efficiently.
h) Permanently creates opportunities for workers to work where they live. Stay around family and friends and not brain drain to the larger cities that leaves rural areas like retirement villages.
i) Brexit Britain could finally train up our own to provide the skills whilst the private sector shed jobs as they become more productive. No more stealing skills from abroad that only leaves those countries worse off.
A no brainer once you realise your taxes do not pay for it. We don’t use the Euro and no longer On the gold standard.
May 20, 2021
So if I were work hard over many years and eventually develop and end up owning a business employing a few hundred people then due to various problems my business fails, how does your guarantee of employment actually work?
Asking because if my company fails both me and all my excellent staff will lose their jobs.
May 20, 2021
Derek,
Would you give me millions (printed by your pals) to keep me and my staff wealthy despite my company having no customers and therefore income ?
May 21, 2021
Hi Peter,
If your business fails even though the UK will be at full employment then you need a new business model. Sell God’s and services people want.
So your options are the same with or without the job guarentee. Apart from one you can walk into a living wage job the next day. None of this £72 per week nonsense that only spreads more unemployment like a virus. The Job guarentee works counter cyclical keeps aggregate demand up not down.
At full employment the only people in the job guarentee would be people moving inbetween sectors as they have been paid off as companies become more productive.
A lot less than The current group of unemployed sitting their in their millions. With a productive return of zero! That produce nothing for the country. Produce no goods , no skills nothing and after while the private sector will refuse to hire them.
Just imagine if a Job guarentee had been in place in 2008 or when Thatcher moved skills and real resources from ship building and mining to high end manufacturing and services. The North and Scotland wouldn’t have been left a wasteland. Some of those areas still haven’t recovered.
What a HUGE difference it would have made and allowed the private sector to adjust to the new reality. Given the private sector more time and decide if it wants to compete with the job guarentee wage or invest in machines and be more productive. The whole time it was deciding the country would be at full employment. Zero chance of a recession.
May 22, 2021
Just stating jobs are guaranteed will not make it happen.
Tell me a nation in history that has ever succeeded with this remarkable theory.
May 21, 2021
Derek “Providing a job guarentee for 15 million Americans @ $ 15 an hr showed clearly that …..” What do we get back for that 16 hours compulsory work, 30? Or none?
Personally I think Asylum seekers should cover their costs in worked hours, on farms, council area litter clearance, cleaning up grafitti, washing windows, there are tasks all can do, money should not be given for nothing in return. We do not even seem to expect them to clean their own areas. If my local council need any suggestions of how to allocate people work that currently isn’t done I could easily give them a list and Glasgow City Centre needs a lot of help with litter, overgrown shrub-land, cleaning windows on empty buildings.
May 21, 2021
The objectives of social care should be to provide support for people to be:
– healthy
– connected, and
– respected.
Predominantly this discussion is about the ‘elderly’.
For the younger ‘elderly’, say 65 to 80, the objectives are best met within three generation households where the elderly can be cared for by their children and contribute to the running of the household and the care of young children. A second best is to support them living ‘independently’.
For those with greater needs for day-to-day care, increasingly like.y over the age of 80, various forms of day care may be required to support the principal carers – the child with whom they live.
Government policy should be oriented to keeping families together. There should not be a presumption that at the age of 18 young adults should leave the family home.
Social security policies, social care policies, (and housing policies) should all be aligned to encourage and support, as the norm, three-generation households. In addition to enabling adequate social care for the elderly, this will also help address the alienation of youths, and the child are challenges of young families with two working parents.
May 21, 2021
Childcare challenges
May 21, 2021
For a start, Giles, take a peek at the vast majority of housing stock built in the last 100 years: how much of it is sized to accommodate 3 generations, how much of it – assuming the funds existed – could be adequately extended to do so (think of the hundreds of miles of terraced housing)?
May 21, 2021
“In total, 1.1 million more young men and women are now living at home, with the number increasing from 2.4 million in 1999 to 3.5 million in 2019. Men are far more likely to be staying with their mum and dad into their 30s. The ONS said 32% of all males aged 20-34 are now living with their parents, compared with 26% in 1999. 21% of women.” source Guardian Nov 2019 “The Loughborough research – the first large-scale quantitative study into the phenomenon – found 71% of young single adults were living with their parents during their early 20s, and a majority (54%) were living at the parental home in their late 20s, falling to a third of those in their early 30s.” Oct 2020.
May 21, 2021
Dear John, I wrote to my MP with a simple self funding solution. The elderly or their families who self fund their elderly care (living costs) have the amount they funded added to the IHT nil rate band when that elderly person does. This would encourage rich people to fund their own elderly social care so they don’t have to pay IHT. E.g. elderly woman in 4 bed house in Twickenham and or her family pay 40,000 for in-home help a year for 10yrs when elderly woman dies at 90, this 400,000 is then added to the nil rate band of say 375K for IHT which means that the family does not pay IHT when they sell the 4 bed house for 700,000. All benefit. Society, families encouraged to look after themselves.
May 22, 2021
Medical care due to old age should be fully funded by the state irrespective. This would include all medical conditions not just some.
Accommodation & anciliary costs associated with the medical care should also be fully funded by the state.
Especially if the state decides this in a compulsory manner.
How to fund it:
a) Withdraw all state benefits from the beneficiary.
b) Withdraw all tax allowances to the beneficiary.
c) Contribution is capped or limited to the (asset value plus income)* 50% over the duration of the care.
d) The assets can be spent for the benefit of the beneficiary in any way within the UK. The legal guardian decides. Meaning the authorities cannot sequester the funds.
e) State directly purchase and owns the freeholds or all retirement care homes.
f) Combine NI & PAYE for workers or contractors.
g) Inflation seems the preferred tax when transparent ones are not chosen.
h) Sell off the BBC. Sell off Westminster.
i) end or cap defined public sector pensions greater than £15k
j) payg taxes for services like border controls,pollution taxes road charges per mile.
k) lets have a flat tax. combine ni paye. tax land & property in trusts at a higher rate annually so they circulate more freely in the economy.
l) scrap Hinkley. HS2. Cull so called ” overseas aid” .
m) stop funding the EU under the table with sweet heart deals.
Where the retirement care home is more voluntary and not mandatory due to “need” . Then further charges may be needed for hotel or lifestyle services. But again the state should hold e) with supported residents bodies independent on the service providers and managers ensuring the charges are reasonable and not abusive.
Any funds left unspent the will beneficiaries should benefit on condition it is invested into a property or spent in the UK within 1 year.
The state can be patient its all usually gone in 3 generations. Fiat money is not the problem. Just tax it back out of the winners in the economy. The state should encourage elder spending, gifting, as it generates demand and tax revenue.
I have heard that when “help” from the government arrives the first thing they ascertain is what assets the target has! Perverse incentive should be removed as well as delays and funding turf wars.
Reply All health care is already free. The argument is about food and housing costs.