LISA NANDY MP: Long term plan needed for social care

The Conservative Party’s manifesto at the last election promised us a comprehensive plan for social care reform and the Prime Minister himself in his first speech on the steps of Downing Street famously pledged to fix the crisis in social care “once and for all”.

Yet the rushed and ill-thought-out proposals that the Government are trying to force through Parliament this week aimed at creating a new tax, the Health and Social Care Levy, to “pay for social care” will not fulfil this promise.

The truth is that the Government still have no plan to tackle the social care crisis and their decision to rip up their manifesto promise and raise National Insurance by 1.25% for working families and the same for businesses will place an enormous burden on thousands of people in Wigan.

The Government claim that the new tax will allow them to put a cap of £86,000 on care costs, but this cap doesn’t cover all costs. People who need care in a care home will continue to face charges of hundreds of pounds a week for their care, even after they hit the cap.

Many people will also still need to sell their homes to fund their care. For example, someone with £150,000 in assets including their home facing large costs because they must go into care, would still have to pay £86,000.

And that’s before living costs – which of course people in care don’t stop facing.

£86,000 might not be a lot to the Prime Minister. But it’s more than the price of many homes in Wigan.

This so-called cap doesn’t even kick in until 2023 meaning no one who is currently without social care or who is in the current social care system will benefit.

The extra funding for social care that the Government says will be provided by this tax rise is not even enough to deal with the immediate pressures on the system, and there is no guarantee that local authorities will get the funding they need. We are also still missing the long-term plan of reform and investment our NHS and social care system needs. More money but no plan is never the answer.

The method that the Government has chosen to increase funding for social care, by hiking National Insurance Contributions, is also unfair and hits working people, especially low earners and young people the hardest.

It leaves a private landlord in Wigan renting out multiple properties not paying a penny more in tax, and their hard-working tenants having to pick up the burden.

It’s a tax rise that means a poorly paid care worker in Wigan will pay more tax for the care they are providing without a penny more in their pay packet.

All this at a time when Council Tax is being raised and food, fuel and energy prices are going up.

And it hits local businesses just as they are getting back on their feet after an incredibly difficult 18 months. It could mean either an attempted squeeze on wages and conditions, higher prices for customers or the scaling back of recruitment and growth plans in local businesses.

The Chancellor is trying to suggest the only way that much needed funding for our NHS and social care system can be raised is by taxing hard working people.

This is not the case. There are many other ways to raise this money – including taxing the incomes of landlords and those who buy and sell large quantities of financial assets, stocks and shares – and Labour has been clear that we want those with the broadest shoulders to carry the burden. And rather than trying to put a sticking plaster on a system that has been broken for so long, we need to have a long-term plan that sets out a new vision for social care.

It starts with investing to keep people well, making sure crucial help is there early to enable people to live life to the full and help them stay at home rather than be forced into care.

We need to build a strong and skilled social care workforce, with a new deal for care workers to make sure they are properly rewarded and have access to training opportunities.

And we need to give more support to the millions of unpaid carers looking after loved ones.

This is a big challenge Labour is tackling and unlike Tory MPs, we’ll do it in a fair way.

Thanks for reading. If you value what we do and are able to support us, a digital subscription is just £1 for your first month. Try us today by clicking here and viewing our offers.