Homes aren’t an asset to give to your children, says minister
‘Dementia tax’ row reignited after elderly told they should sell their houses to pay for care
PENSIONERS should not regard their homes as “an asset to give to their offspring”, the social care minister has said, as she revived the row over the Conservatives’ so-called “dementia tax”.
Jackie Doyle-price said it was “unfair” for younger taxpayers to “prop up people to keep their property” when it could be sold to help pay for their care needs. The stark language contrasts with the Tories’ promises last year to make sure that people could pass on to their children the homes they have “worked for and saved for”.
David Cameron described it at the time as a “natural human instinct”.
The Conservatives shelved a manifesto plan to make middle-class pensioners pay towards care they receive in their own homes after it proved unpopular with voters, but critics said the minister’s comments suggested the policy had been “resurrected”.
A government source last night said there was a need to address the “imbalance” between people who needed residential care and domiciliary care, because those needing residential care faced higher personal contributions.
It came as the economist who carried out a review of social care urged the Government to impose a cap on care home costs to remove the “catastrophic risk facing us all”.
The Government is due to publish a green paper before the end of the year setting out social care funding plans, and Ms Doyle-price’s comments will fuel speculation that ministers intend to revisit the idea of forcing more pensioners to sell their homes.
A video of a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference has emerged in which the minister says: “The reality is that the taxpayer shouldn’t necessarily be propping up people to keep their property and hand it on to their children when they’re generating massive care needs.
“We’ve got to a stage where people feel that they are the custodian of an asset to give to their offspring but actually we need to get back to a stage where homes are for living in.
“People who are now well into their pension ages are sitting in houses that really are too big for their needs and we do need to have those conversations about what’s appropriate earlier. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have gone through university without paying anything, fortunate enough to have then bought our own homes, have been able to build up a level of wealth.
“But people coming through who are going to be funding us after we have retired have not had those advantages and fundamentally it’s unfair for us to expect them to pay through their taxes to deal with that.”
Asked whether Ms Doyle-price’s comments represented government policy, a government spokesman said: “We clearly recognise that there is an imbalance in the current system
with the way people’s assets are treated depending on whether they need domiciliary care or not, but as a party we want to be able to promote people passing on property to their children as much as possible.”
Critics suggested that Tory policy had reversed since last year, when Mr Cameron told voters: “The home that you’ve worked and saved for belongs to you and your family. We’ll help you pass it on to your children.”
Faced with the ever-rising cost of caring for the elderly, the Tories pledged in their election manifesto to reform social care funding by bringing means-testing for domiciliary care into line with means-testing for residential care.
Under the current system, people who need residential care face losing all but £23,250 of their assets, including their home, but family property is not included in the means test for those being cared for at home, who often include people with dementia.
The Conservatives proposed raising the £23,250 floor to £100,000 and said payments could be deferred so people needing domiciliary care could remain at home, with payments taken from their estate after they died. The policy was dubbed the “dementia tax” by Labour and was criticised by pensioners’ groups.
Theresa May tried to limit the damage by announcing there would be an “absolute limit” on how much people would pay, while insisting that “nothing has changed”.
Last night Jeremy Corbyn said the Conservatives had “resurrected” the dementia tax, which was “rightly rejected by the public”. The Labour leader will attempt to capitalise on the row today by announcing plans for a National Care Service.
In his report on social care in 2011, Sir Andrew Dilnot recommended that an individual’s lifetime contribution towards their social care bill should be capped at £35,000.
Speaking before his delivery of the inaugural Royal London annual lecture today, he suggested a cap would also mean people could take out insurance policies to cover the cost.
“We need to find a way to pool this risk rather than let it be a later-life care-cost lottery,” he said. “A cap on care costs removes the catastrophic risk facing us all.”