Care cost chaos after May U-turn on key pledge

Pensioners left in confusion over cap on social care contributions

THERESA MAY was under pressure last night to spell out exactly how much pensioners will pay for their care in old age after she performed an about-turn on a key manifesto commitment.

Mrs May became the first Prime Min- ister in living memory to change a manifesto pledge before an election when she announced a cap on the amount pensioners will have to pay towards their care costs.

But she gave no details on how high the cap would be, leaving pensioners in confusion over whether or not the policy would affect them.

The Daily Telegraph understands that Mrs May could now be forced to strip winter fuel payments from more pensioners than originally planned in order to pay for the newly announced care cap.

Mrs May decided to act after the Tories’ lead in the polls slumped from a high of 23 points over Labour to just nine points at the weekend because of a voter backlash over the Conservatives’ funding plans for social care, called a “dementia tax” by opponents.

The manifesto had promised a “floor” of £100,000 on social care contributions, meaning pensioners could pass on that amount to their children but faced otherwise unlimited contributions towards residential or domiciliary care. It contained no mention of a cap, dropping a 2015 manifesto commitment to limit contributions to £72,000.

A new poll yesterday showed that Labour had surged ahead of the Tories in Wales, with a 10-point lead that reversed the Tories’ 10-point lead over Labour in the principality earlier in the campaign. The polls made grim reading for the Conservatives in the week that postal voting opens.

Last night, in an interview with the BBC’S Andrew Neil, Mrs May was forced to deny that Jeremy Corbyn was “rewriting her manifesto” after she said she had “clarified” the proposed policy in response to “scaremongering” by the Labour leader.

She insisted she was “being honest” about the cost of social care, adding: “I’m not going to bury my head in the sand.”

Pensioners’ groups urged the Prime Minister to end the uncertainty around care costs by announcing who would be stripped of winter fuel payments and how high the cap would be.

Neil Duncan-jordan, of the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), said: “We are worried because pensioners are worried. People don’t know what’s going on.

“Eighty per cent of pensioners own their own property and they want to know how this affects them, but no one can give them any answers.

“It makes clear, if we weren’t clear already, that the architects of this policy hadn’t thought it through. Is it right that an important election policy is being made on the hoof?”

Conservative candidates reported back to Conservative Central Headquarters that the policy was proving hugely unpopular with pensioners – one of the Tories’ core support groups – causing serious concern in Downing Street.

In an extraordinary change of heart, Mrs May said there would now be an “absolute limit” on how much pensioners would have to pay, but stopped short of saying what the cap would be.

Answering questions from the media after announcing the policy in Wrexham, a clearly irritated Mrs May

insisted that “nothing has changed” because the manifesto contained a commitment to launch a Green Paper to consult on social care costs.

But Labour said her manifesto had been thrown into “chaos” and she had “only added to the uncertainty for millions of older people and their families”. The Liberal Democrats said the Conservative manifesto was in “meltdown”.

Opponents also seized on the reversal to say it undermined Mrs May’s mantra of “strong and stable” leadership.

Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s election co-ordinator, said the manifesto had “unravelled”, adding: “This is weak and unstable leadership…if this is how they handle their own manifesto, how will they cope with the Brexit negotiations?”

Conservative sources admitted that one possible knock-on effect of the new policy is that £200 winter fuel payments, which will be means-tested for the first time, might have to be taken from even more pensioners to make up the shortfall in “dementia tax” receipts resulting from the cap.

The Tories have not announced where the axe will fall for winter fuel payments. The NPC estimates that nine million of the country’s 12 million pensioners could lose the payments. Scotland’s one million pensioners will keep it because, the Conservatives have said, it is “colder” north of the border.