PM said in 2019 that he had a plan for care, ‘ready to go’ but it is clear he never did ... and offers more injustice instead
ON the doorstep of No 10, after the 2019 General Election, Mr Johnson told us that he had fully worked out proposals for social care, which he would be bringing forward. It has long since become apparent that was not true.
After two years’ silence, he has come forward with a scheme, which he insisted on ramming through the House of Commons in a day, so there was minimal opportunity to scrutinise the detail of what is proposed.
As usual, the Government has a reassuring-sounding ‘line.’ No-one, they say will ever pay more than £86,000, and no-one will have to sell their home to pay their care bills.
Sadly, this story doesn’t really stand up under scrutiny, which may be why scrutiny is just what parliament was denied.
The £86,000 ONLY applies to the costs of care – to be fair the most expensive bit – so people can face far bigger bills when food and cost of living charges are included.
And, as Keir Starmer asked him, just how does he expect most people to find the first £86,000 without selling their home?
In time, these problems will become evident, so people may wonder why the Government bothered to obscure the issue now.
I fear the answer is simple, cynical, and increasingly typical of this Government’s approach. The people who will find out the truth in the end are the vulnerable and their families, whose voices are rarely heard or heeded.
The story is designed for the rest of us – those who know there is a big problem with social care, are not themselves directly affected, and want to be reassured it is being tackled.
We are being told to stop worrying, that the Government has ‘got it done,’ and hopes no-one will think about it again until well after the next General Election.
In the meantime, the taxes on income to pay for the scheme fall, as ever under this Government, unfairly on those who are not the best placed to bear them.
The shock of soaring energy prices is not the sole responsibility of this Government, although if they had invested substantially in renewables and energy conservation or held onto our major gas storage facility we would have been in a different position and better able to deal with the fallout of this major hike in prices.
But while this is a problem we face in common, it is far worse for those already struggling to pay household bills.
The Government always insists that work is the best way out of poverty – but
This is a Government more out of touch with the reality of daily life than any in living memory
ignores the fact that many struggling families already are in work and yet still can’t reliably put food on their table.
It was a real revelation last week when the Minister responsible, Thérèse Coffey, defended the planned removal of £20 from Universal Credit by claiming it was only a couple of hours’ extra work. This beggars belief on two counts.
First, the low-paid workers do not earn £10 per hour, and secondly she, of all people, ought to have known that the way UC works is that the more you earn, the less benefit you get.
Yet again, rather than acting to deal with the issue, the Government is mostly concerned to convince those not receiving the benefit that everything is alright so it is OK to re-elect the Tories.
This is a Government more out of touch with the reality of daily life than any in living memory.
For all the talk of levelling up, Mr Johnson always ends up levelling down – whether by slashing Universal Credit, hiking up pay packet taxes or seeing bills soar.
It is a sad and worrying spectacle.