The Government’s policy to “fix” social care is coming out in a very odd way, with the tax rises to pay for it and therefore the way people will be protected from having potentially to sell their homes announced at a different time from new policies about actually providing the care.
The latter were outlined in a White Paper which it would be polite to call high-level, in the Whitehall jargon, as there are many details still to come. The former has more detail attached so it can be analysed. The first thing to say is that the proposed £86K cap on care costs is not quite as was presented in many places, as it does not cover the hotel costs of a residential care place.
Nevertheless, it does provide a degree of reassurance that at least the care costs will be capped. Another level of assurance is provided by the protection of overall assets once they have been reduced to £100k. This is considerably more generous than the previous figure contemplated by the Coalition Government, when they passed the 2014 Care Act which was based on the Dilnot proposals for a cap.
However there are still problems with a flat cap across the country, whether 86 thousand or any other figure. For the vast majority of people their wealth is overwhelmingly the value of their home, and this differs so markedly in different parts of the country that a single figure for the cap creates unfairness.
In my Ashford constituency the average house price is £380,000. I have Conservative colleagues where the average house price is half that. So telling someone that they (or often their children who will inherit) could lose 86 thousand of that figure is a much bigger blow in some parts of the country than others. In a paper for the research institute Public Policy Projects I have argued that instead we should go for a fixed percentage of assets which people can be guaranteed to keep. That would eliminate the geographical lottery that otherwise arises.
My other main concern is whether an insurance market will develop to allow people to buy policies to give them peace of mind. The Government assumes that it will, but the insurance industry is not yet convinced.
We are moving forward with care policy, and the Government should be congratulated for grasping this long-lasting nettle. But many important details are not settled yet. Social care is some way from being “fixed”.