Tory pledge unravels days after ruling out care cap
EXPLAINING the Conservatives’ most striking manifesto pledge last Thursday, Jeremy Hunt left no room for doubt. The idea of a cap on social care contributions was “unfair” and so “we’re being completely explicit in our manifesto that we’re dropping it”.
Instead, the manifesto was going to impose a “floor” of £100,000, meaning that pensioners would get to keep a maximum of £100,000 rather than having to pay the £72,000 maximum promised in the 2015 manifesto.
Mr Hunt helpfully told Radio 4 listeners exactly why a cap was unfair. If someone owned a house worth, say, £2 million and had care costs of £200,000, they would not have to pay the full amount “because they’re capped”. The people who would end up paying would be “taxpayers, younger families who are possibly themselves struggling to make ends meet”.
Fast forward four days to yesterday morning, and Mr Hunt was telling a completely different story.
“We want to make sure that people who have worked hard and saved up all their lifetimes do not have to worry about losing all their assets through a disease as random as dementia,” he told the London Evening Standard. “That’s why we want to introduce an absolute limit on the amount of money anyone has to pay for their care.”
For what may well be the first time ever, a governing party had reversed a manifesto pledge before voters even had a chance to go to the polls.
Theresa May, who officially announced the policy moments later, had made political history, but for all the wrong reasons. It was the culmination of a weekend of panic, turmoil and finger-pointing within the Conservative Party after their lead in the opinion polls – once as high as 23 per cent – had been cut to just nine points.
Worse still, the weekend feedback was that the “dementia tax” was being raised repeatedly by voters on the doorsteps. According to one Tory, it was going down “like a bowl of sick”.
The finger of blame for the meltdown was being pointed yesterday at Nick Timothy, the Prime Minister’s joint chief of staff, who is said to have added the policy at the last minute without it being cleared with senior Cabinet ministers. John Godfrey, head of the Downing Street policy unit, is said to have advised against the move.
The Conservative manifesto contained details of plans to means-test winter fuel payments and to allow pensioners to keep £100,000 of assets, rather than the current £23,500. But people receiving care at home would have to pay for the first time, in line
The ‘dementia tax’ was being raised on the doorstep. One Tory said it was going down ‘like a bowl of sick’
with those in residential care.
There was no mention of a cap. A 2015 manifesto commitment to impose a cap of £72,000 – already deferred until 2020 – had been dropped.
Labour smelled blood, labelling the new funding arrangements the “dementia tax” on the grounds that people who died of cancer or other illnesses would be cared for by the NHS, costing them nothing, while those who died of dementia, needing residential or social care, would have to pay.
They were gifted another Conservative own goal on Friday when it emerged that pensioners north of the border would not lose their winter fuel allowance because, said Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, it is “colder” in Scotland. Nor would they be subject to the “dementia tax” because social care is completely free in Scotland.
On Saturday Mrs May went canvassing and was filmed being told by a middle-aged woman that she had been “unnerved” by the policy. One former cabinet minister admitted resorting to telling constituents the plan was likely to be refined before it was put into practice, even though they had no knowledge that would happen.
As the backlash grew, Damian Green, the Work and Pensions Secretary, was despatched to The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday to hold the line.
“We have set out this policy,” he said, “which we’re not going to look at again.”
But Boris Johnson, interviewed by ITV’S Robert Peston, clearly knew something was up.
The Foreign Secretary said he understood people’s “reservations” and gave a hint of what was to come by adding: “There will be a consultation on getting it right.” By Sunday night the Conservatives were so worried about the continuing controversy that they paid for advertisements on Google that ensured anyone searching for “dementia tax” would first see a Tory website titled “The So-called Dementia Tax – Get the Truth on the Plans.”
There were also reports that the social care policy would hit legal problems, because some local authorities have denied pensioners their right to defer payments for residential care until after their death.
By yesterday morning Mrs May had decided enough was enough. There would be an “absolute limit” on how much people would be expected to pay for their own social care, she said.
Although she could not bring herself to say the word, she had just announced that there would, after all, be a cap.