I regret delaying our care reforms, says Chancellor

JEREMY Hunt has said he greatly regrets delaying urgently needed reforms to elderly care but insisted they will still come into force if the Conservatives win the next election.

His comments came as the architect of the overdue proposals said it was a ‘tragedy’ they were being pushed back another two years.

The Chancellor revealed in Thursday’s Autumn Statement that the £86,000 lifetime cap on personal care and more generous means test, designed to stop pensioners having to sell family homes, would now be introduced in 2025.

But yesterday he was reminded that almost a decade ago he had described the existing system as unfair and said social care reform was an issue that had been ducked

‘I don’t pretend this was easy’

for too long. Mr Hunt told BBC Breakfast: ‘I don’t pretend this was an easy thing for me to do given what I said in 2013 but it does mean we can give overall a bigger increase to social care than it’s ever had in its history.

‘Some of those decisions are very hard for me as Chancellor, I’m a Conservative Chancellor that has put up taxes, I’ve had to delay those Dilnot reforms to social care which is something I passionately did not want to do.

‘I’m doing it because we face an international economic crisis and I recognise that people are worried about the future and I’m prepared to do difficult things even if they’re things I wouldn’t personally choose to do, because they’re the right thing for the country.’

In a separate interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: ‘It’s not disappearing into the ether, but I agree it’s a source of great regret to me.’

But he insisted: ‘I believe it will happen if the Conservatives win the next general election.’

And he said that over the next two years, local authorities will receive £4.7billion extra to pay for an 200,000 more care packages, in turn reducing the number of elderly patients being stuck in NHS hospital beds. Town halls had called for a one-year delay because of shortages in staff and cash.

But Sir Andrew Dilnot, the economist who chaired the care commission set up by David Cameron in 2010, told the same programme: ‘The statement yesterday said it was all about protecting the most vulnerable, demonstrating the British value of compassion. Well, it’s hard to think of somebody who we need to feel more compassion for than somebody who has a longrunning dementia or somebody who has chronic arthritis so bad that they can’t dress themselves or boil themselves a kettle...

‘We wouldn’t dream of saying to somebody diagnosed with a terrible cancer that they were on their own until they spent the last £23,000 of their assets.

‘Why on earth should we say it to people who need social care? It seems inhumane.’

He said he had spoken to families who had been waiting for the introduction of the cap for whom the new date would be too late, adding: ‘It’s a tragedy.’