I’d rather my aunt – not the young or the poor – paid for her care

WHeN my fiercely independent aunt was getting frail, I had lunch with her and nervously broached the Care Question.

Had she thought, I asked gently, what would happen if she could no longer live alone or manage her own finances, and if she needed social care?

It was not an easy conversation. But thank goodness this formidable former head teacher and magistrate, a spinster, eventually agreed to grant me power of attorney a few years ago.

Today, aged 87, she is stricken with the Alzheimer’s that also crippled my grandmother. What would she have thought about the Government’s bombshell announcement yesterday that national insurance is to be hiked to help pay for social care – raising the overall tax burden to the highest level seen in this country during peacetime?

As someone who spent her life helping others and working with children, she would have wanted everyone to enjoy the high standard of care she now does. But she would never have wanted to burden the young.

That is the first problem with yesterday’s £40billion tax hike. National insurance is almost entirely a tax on workers. Yes, the Government has decided that from April 2023, 1.2million working pensioners will also be expected to pay the new levy. This is an important symbolic move. But quite simply: we should not be protecting wealthy older people at the expense of younger workers. So why did the Government resort to raising national insurance rather than taxing income or wealth?

For starters, many voters are confused about what national insurance actually is and perhaps vaguely think it is ring-fenced for pensions or the NHS.

That’s wrong: the money simply pours into the Chancellor’s pot along with everything else we stump up. Politically, however, raising national insurance is easier than raising income tax. This new increase, along with a tax on share dividends, feels fiddly.

Don’t get me wrong: I passionately support putting more money into social care and solving a problem that has bedevilled policymakers for a generation. Twenty-three years since Tony Blair promised to address social care, and four prime ministers and ten health secretaries later, credit must go to Boris Johnson for grasping this nettle.

But not only do I worry that the new measures are deeply unfair on the young, I also fear ministers may be landing themselves with problems further down the road.

If it is to work, the Prime Minister’s promise to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all’ must come with the transparency Germany and Japan have used in their world-leading insurance systems.

Under the new scheme, the NHS is to receive an additional £12billion per year for each of the next three years to tackle the waiting lists caused by the pandemic. Then the national insurance hike is set to be replaced by a dedicated ‘health and social care levy’, which will also be paid by working pensioners. By that time, ministers need to have had a frank conversation with the public about how social care can be reformed to provide better treatment for the elderly and disabled.

They need a clear plan on how to develop the workforce, make care seem a worthwhile career, provide better rehabilitation after hospital and keep older people healthier in the first place.

Added to which, the so-called ‘cap’ on care costs is far from what it seems. Many voters will hear this and tell themselves that that is all they will have to pay. But, crucially, the cap will not cover bed and board, which make up about half the costs paid by residents (these costs may have a separate cap). All this needs spelling out far more clearly or it risks creating the wrong expectations.

AND in a time when workers are being asked to dig so deep, the Government’s reluctance to drop the triple-lock on pensions for good is simply wrong.

This new levy risks penalising the low-paid, including those working in the sector, at the expense of wealthy care home residents. I would rather use my aunt’s money to look after her than ask poorer taxpayers to preserve my inheritance. Would she – now being helped round the clock by kind and dedicated staff – approve? I’m not so sure.

■ Camilla Cavendish is an FT Weekend columnist and author of Extra Time: Ten Lessons For Living Longer Better