Rif t over social care must be healed, Boris

AFTER two exhausting weeks of internecine warfare over sleaze and second jobs, the Government faces another damaging rift with its new Red Wall MPs – this time over social care.

When Boris Johnson announced his radical care reforms in September there was almost universal support – inside the party and out.

The threshold at which care home residents must pay full fees is being raised from £23,250 to £100,000 and lifetime care costs capped at £86,000.

Last week, however, the small print revealed the new scheme is not as generous as first thought, with poorer pensioners – disproportionately those in Red Wall areas – worst affected.

Although the threshold is being raised, care home residents with assets below £100,000 will still have to pay some fees on a tapered, means-tested basis, the rest being met by the local authority.

It had been assumed that these subsidies would count towards the lifetime cap. It now transpires they won’t, potentially leaving thousands worse off.

There is also consternation that in Red Wall areas, where house prices tend to be lower, care costs will swallow up a much larger proportion of residents’ estates than in the South. Labour is calling it an inheritance tax on the north and Midlands.

But for all the sound and fury, this is a row that could have been at least partially defused by proper communication.

The truth is that everyone needing care will be much better off under the new system, making a nonsense of Labour claims that pensioners in the north and Midlands will be ‘hard hit’.

If ministers had opened up the lurking anomalies and apparent unfairnesses to general discussion at the start, they could have been worked through calmly.

Instead, they were quietly sneaked out – leading Tory backbenchers to smell a rat and allowing Labour to cry betrayal.

In fact Mr Johnson grasped the social care nettle when other prime ministers have shied away from it for more than 20 years (albeit funding his reforms with a painful rise in national Insurance payments).

he must now focus urgently and intensely on the detail. Otherwise, what should have been a triumph is in serious danger of becoming a disaster.