Tories’ social care plan hits poorest in favour of the rich
ON ENTERING Downing Street, after becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson declared he had a plan to fix social care.
Details of that plan are now finally emerging, and it is clear that the one and only aspect Boris wanted to fix was the prospect of elderly property owners having to sell their houses to fund their care.
There is nothing in Boris’s plan about giving extra funds to councils, or address the shortage of care workers and their pay, or reduce the burden of fees to those paying out of their own pocket.
Instead Boris has introduced a cap on care costs of £86,000. For care, and not for accommodation etc. That means for someone with a house worth £186,000, chances are that it will still have to be sold, a house worth a million, chances are that it won’t.
His choice of a National Insurance levy will hit jobs and lower paid workers will be harder hit than those better off.
Someone earning £20,000 a year will have to find an extra £130 a year. From resources which might have already been diminished because of the proposed £20-a-week reduction in Universal Credit payments.
For someone earning £100,000, they will have to pay another £1,000 each year – a drop in the ocean out of the extra £80,000 pay they have received.
As an alternative to Boris’s plan, he could have removed the upper earnings limit on National Insurance, which would only have affected the top 15% of taxpayers, and would have raised £11bn for the NHS and care sector.
Or he could have looked at capital gains tax or other taxes paid by the better off, or finally get serious about tax avoidance schemes from the likes of Amazon.
Boris’s plan will hit those least able to pay, while giving protection to the inheritances of the better off.
Harry Dobson