Yahoo News 'Fake claims' v U-turns: who is telling the truth on social care, May or Corbyn?
The sound of screeching rubber has accompanied Theresa May’s U-turn on her policy on social care costs, fatally dubbed the “dementia tax”. But she insists that “nothing has changed” since her manifesto was published last Thursday and she has simply “clarified” the policy in response to “fake claims” by Jeremy Corbyn. Who’s right?
A Guardian analysis shows the prime minister is wrong to say that Corbyn has been making “fake claims”. Her promise of a Dilnot-style cap on care costs appears to have been ruled out at the launch of the manifesto and did not seem to include a pledge to consult further on the details of the measures. A green paper is promised but on issues which are “not merely a function of money”.
What did Jeremy Corbyn say?
It is true the Labour leader initially got some of the detail of the policy wrong when he responded on the morning after the Conservative manifesto was published:
What the Conservatives are doing is to put a £100,000 cap on social care which actually goes nowhere near meeting the needs of somebody with extreme conditions can easily spend £50,000 a year on their care. It’s completely unrealistic, what they’re doing. We will make sure social care is properly funded.
This was wrong. The Conservatives were not putting a £100,000 cap on social care costs. They were planning to make people pay for care in their own home unless they have assets of less than £100,000 including the value of their house.
Corbyn quickly corrected his error and the Labour party, and much of the media, spent the weekend voicing the widespread fears of families that they could lose their homes to pay their social care costs later in life.
Corbyn and his party repeatedly warned that Thursday’s manifesto policy would “leave thousands of the most vulnerable at risk of losing their homes”.
Labour said many were referring to it as a “dementia tax” and that it would mean “more people having to pay for care in their own homes. Their plans mean that the value of your home will be used to assess whether you are eligible for state funded care in your own home. People will be left to fend for themselves and will be forced to use their home to pay for care, even if they are receiving care in their own home.”
It was not only Corbyn and Labour. The Conservative Bow Group described it as “the biggest stealth tax in history”. The King’s Fund called the plans “deeply disappointing”. The Mail on Sunday and the Financial Times had front-page headlines calling the policy a “death tax”. May appeared to be dismissing all this as “fake claims”. They were not. They stemmed directly from the original policy as announced in the manifesto only last Thursday. Corbyn was correct to say that people would have to pay more. How much more was unlimited because the policy made no mention of a cap or ceiling on the bill.
What did the Conservative manifesto say?
The manifesto promised a “floor”, a maximum £100,000 that people would be allowed to keep when the bill for their care costs has to be paid. But it did not propose a cap, a maximum amount that people would have to pay.
Second, to ensure this is fair, we will introduce a single capital floor, set at £100,000, more than four times the current means test threshold. This will ensure that, no matter how large the cost of care turns out to be, people will always retain at least £100,000 of their savings and assets, including value in the family home.
Third, we will extend the current freedom to defer payments for residential care to those receiving care at home, so no one will have to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for care …
The manifesto also clearly rejects the proposal for a cap, saying the social care costs plan would be “more equitable within and across the generations” than the Dilnot report – which proposed introducing a cap on costs because that would “mostly benefit a small number of wealthier people”. Dilnot put the cost of a £72,000 ceiling at an extra £3bn.
The manifesto then goes on to promise a green paper but it does not mention consulting on the details of the “dementia tax”, instead saying it will address much wider issues:
An efficient elderly care system which provides dignity is not merely a function of money. So our forthcoming green paper will also address system-wide issues to improve the quality of care and reduce variation in practice.
So is May right to say ‘nothing has changed’?
No. The manifesto explicitly rejected Dilnot’s solution of introducing a cap on social care costs. The prime minister has now announced that a limit will be introduced, albeit not exactly the same as Dilnot’s. How much will be a subject of further consultation.
The prime minister is also disingenuous about claiming the detail of the “dementia tax” was clearly subject to a green paper consultation in the manifesto. That is not clear as the green paper is to address wider issues in the social care system.
If there were any doubts the manifesto rejected a cap on social care costs, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt dispelled them on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on the morning of the manifesto launch: “If you have that cap that was his proposal [Andrew Dilnot’s] … and we couldn’t be clearer because … not only are we dropping it, but we’re dropping it ahead of a general election and we’re being completely explicit in our manifesto that we’re dropping it, and we’re dropping it because we’ve looked again at this proposal and we don’t think it is fair.”
VERDICT: Theresa May is wrong to say that Corbyn has been making “fake claims” about her social care policy – although he did make an initial error which was quickly corrected. His concerns were widely shared by experts and Tory-inclined newspapers. Even after the U-turn, families will still be at risk of having to sell the family home to pay for the costs of a loved one after they die, depending on at what level the costs are capped.
May has made a U-turn because the manifesto explicitly rejects Dilnot, saying it would “mostly benefit a small number of wealthier people”. She is also wrong to say that the manifesto makes clear they were always going to consult on the detail of the social care charge.
