It’s all right for me. I’m not (yet) dependent on social care. I don’t require assistance with getting up in the morning, feeding and washing myself, eating and going to the toilet. One day things might be different. Most of us prefer not to think about it. Sadly, hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions are getting inadequate and in many instances no social care at all. What to do about it?
In the last parliament, Labour frontbencher Andy Burnham put forward a simple plan, that we introduce a tax on estates of say 10%, which would dramatically increase funding for social care. Yes, 10% is a lot and any government planning to introduce it would need to fully consult people and front up with the alternatives, of which there are few. One alternative is to not bother to do anything. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
When Burnham announced his idea, the right wing press went berserk. “Labour to introduce death tax”, they screamed, explaining that not only would the Labour Party want to tax people when they were alive, they wanted to screw them in death, too. As Labour was in opposition, as it will be for both the foreseeable and unforeseeable future, barring a political miracle, the Tory government in which some Lib Dems had jobs decided to do nothing. Whether they didn’t agree with Burnham’s idea, or they were running scared of Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch is anyone’s business.
Now, under Theresa May, the idea of the “death tax” is being floated again. I do not care if she is stealing Burnham’s idea. If it can be seen to work, then it should be introduced.
I get very tired of governments of all shades, but mainly the Tories, who promise things and then threaten or postpone them. Remember before the general election in 2015 when Jeremy Hunt said he would take action to ensure that people no longer needed to sell their homes to pay for nursing care in later life? I have first and plenty of second hand evidence of people who worked hard and played by the rules all their lives and wanted to hand down an inheritance to their families and then saw it all disappear in care costs, when people who had not worked hard and played by the rules got their care paid for by the state. But as soon as the Tories won in 2015, we were reminded that Hunt’s was a political promise and the first thing he did was to kick the proposal into the long grass, postponing any debate never mind a decision for at least five years. The tabloids said nothing.
If it was your parent or grandparent lying on a hospital trolley, unable to get home because there was no care available, how would you feel? It is all very well seeing it as someone else’s problem, but someone else’s problem today could be your problem tomorrow.
A solution will not come for free and we will need to pay for it. I am strongly in favour of a contributory benefits system and in normal circumstances that should always apply. If you work hard, pay into the system all your life, I do not think it is right, or even moral, to see everything you have worked for taken away. It’s what we used to call national insurance. If you don’t pay in, well that’s a different story. With home ownership becoming beyond reach for millions of people, how will we come up with a system for those who don’t have homes to lose to pay for their later care? Greater minds than mine will have to come up with solutions. As we know, doing nothing is not an option.
I am very concerned about Theresa May’s Tory government, which has lurched as far to the right, maybe even further to the right, than Margaret Thatcher and even Ukip. She talks the talk about “a country that works for everyone” (this slogan must be repeated by all Tory MPs until it embeds itself into the public psyche, like “long term economic plan” and “taking back control”) but her actions suggest the exact opposite. We must do more on mental health by doing less is not a catchy slogan but it sums up May’s modus operandi. I hope that is not her attitude towards social care.
Call it a “death tax”, call it what you like. The reality that the collapse in social care is a national scandal, as it is when people are forced to sell their own homes to pay for their own care. The longer we leave things, the more expensive solutions will become. And if the Mail and Express blow a gasket about it, well frankly who cares?
