'The need for an up-to-date care system dates back to the last Labour Government'

MP for Ellesmere Port

THE term ‘adult social care’ covers a wide range of activities to help people who are older or have a disability or physical illness live independently and stay well and safe.

It is an increasingly important subject for us all to grasp in a world where, thankfully, more men and women benefit from increasingly long lives, even though many of them need regular help on a day-to-day basis.

That help does not come cheaply as residents have come to realise because charges connected to adult social care have their own special category on our council tax bills.

That is because Government Ministers have for more than a decade failed to come up with a system to pay for adult social care nationally. Instead they have passed the buck and landed councils with another big funding problem.

The need for an up-to-date care system dates back to the last Labour Government before 2010. It was always anticipated that such a reform would be agreed in Parliament on an all-Party basis.

There was a general consensus after a commission headed by Sir Andrew Dilnot concluded the adult social care system was not fit for purpose and required more and fairer funding – both from individuals and the state – for it to be sustainable.

Almost a decade later, nothing had happened when Boris Johnson famously promised on his first day as Prime Minister in 2019 to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all, with a clear plan that we have prepared”.

We are now nearly at the end of 2021 and still nothing has happened. We do finally have an adult social are plan, albeit one introduced as a last-ditch resort and without any scrutiny as part of the Health and Care Bill 2020-2021.

There has been no attempt to achieve all-Party consent and expert Sir Andrew Dilnot says rather than improve the situation, it will make matters worse and create another North-South divide. It beggars belief.

As Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care) it fell to me in Parliament on Monday to explain why the official Opposition will be voting against social care reforms proposed by the Government.

The aim of the change is to remove means-tested benefits from the costs that count towards the care cap but the way it is being proposed is a wholly regressive measure, to say the least, to give support through means testing but then penalise people for receiving it later on. Not only will this proposal fail to stop people from having to sell their homes to pay for care costs, it will bake in unfairness for a generation.

Organisations including Age UK and The King’s Fund have come down firmly against the new proposals which, they say, rather than help people with modest means will instead benefit those living in more expensive properties.

In short, those living in lower priced homes will be at much greater risk of having to sell their properties to pay for the adult social care they may need in later life.