YOU WON’T HAVE TO SELL HOME TO PAY FOR YOUR CARE

May: EVERYONE can defer care bills – and keep £100k assets Winter fuel cash axed for millions to help fund plan

THERESA May will today promise the elderly they will not have to sell their homes to pay for care. Launching the Conservative Party manifesto, the Prime Minister will say she wants to end the heartache suffered by thousands of families a year.

Under her plans, no one will have to sell up – whether they live in a care home or in their own prop- erty. Mrs May also pledges to quadruple to £100,000 the wealth that can be kept before you have to pay for care.

But the winter fuel allowance, which is worth up to £300 a year, would be means-tested. and plans for a lifetime cap on care costs have

been scrapped. In a further blow, up to 900,000 people who receive care at home could face costly bills for the first time. Today’s Tory manifesto will: Pledge to raise the starting threshold for income tax to £12,500;

Promise to raise the threshold for 40p tax to £50,000;

Pump £4billion into schools to ensure ‘no child will lose out’ from a shake-up in education funding;

Scrap George Osborne’s ‘tax lock’ that guaranteed no rise in income tax, VAT or national insurance;

Protect other pensioner benefits, such as the free bus pass, free TV licence and free eye tests;

Axe Nick Clegg’s free school dinners for infants, but extend access to breakfast clubs;

Keep the target to cut net migration to the tens of thousands.

Mrs May last night acknowledged she needed to take difficult decisions to tackle Britain’s biggest problems, including social care which is facing a deficit of £5billion a year.

In the foreword to the manifesto, she described the Tory blueprint as

‘Declaration of intent’

‘a declaration of intent – a commitment to get to grips with the great challenges of our time and to take the big, difficult decisions that are right for Britain in the long term’.

She added: ‘People are rightly sceptical of politicians who claim to have easy answers to deeply complex problems. It is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the challenges ahead and the hard work required to overcome them.’

The manifesto will be launched in a Labour-held seat in Yorkshire, in a sign of the Tories’ growing belief that they can make progress in Labour’s traditional heartlands.

Mrs May will say: ‘Brexit will define us: our place in the world, our economic security and our future prosperity.

‘Now more than ever, Britain needs a strong and stable government to get the best deal for our country.’

Tory sources believe Mrs May’s decision to bite the bullet on social care will contrast favourably with Jeremy Cor- byn’s costly spending proposals in the Labour manifesto.

But the changes are likely to prove controversial and appear less generous than the pledges made by the Conservatives previously. Ministers legislated in 2014 to introduce a total cap on lifetime care costs of £72,000, meaning no one would be forced to pay more.

The last government also said it would raise the asset threshold at which individuals are forced to contribute to their care costs from £23,250 to £118,000. But the scheme was shelved shortly after the last election because of doubts about the financial cost.

Tory sources stressed no one would be forced to sell up to pay for their care. Instead, ministers will extend the ‘deferred payment scheme’ which allows costs to be clawed back from a person’s estate after death.

The idea of a care cap was proposed by economist Sir Andrew Dilnot in 2011, when he said it should be £35,000.

The Conservatives have already announced plans for unpaid leave to care for a loved one.