ELDERLY IN the United Kingdom will not have to pay for more than two years of nursing home care after 2014 under a plan promised by British prime minister Gordon Brown yesterday. However, facing the threat of an election backlash, the Labour Party has scrapped an effort to impose a 10 per cent tax on the estate of all elderly people needing residential care.
The estate tax – similar to the Fair Deal measure brought to the Dáil by Minister for Health Mary Harney – has proven to be unpopular with older voters, who have responded to a much-criticised Conservative Party poster campaign condemning the measure as a “death tax”, opinion pollsters indicate.
Holding out the promise that all residential care could be paid for directly by the taxpayer from 2015 onwards – even though 1.7 million people with dementia and other conditions are going to need care over the next 20 years, Mr Brown said: “This is an issue about the future of Britain and the future of our society from which we must not hide.” On Monday night, the chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling announced without warning that Labour would not seek to impose a levy on the estates of those cared for in residential homes, although the health secretary, Andy Burnham, has clearly not backed away from the need for some mandatory contribution.
Still favouring a mandatory universal levy, Mr Burnham said that one paid by everyone – and not just to those who eventually require residential care – would prevent people facing huge care costs. He has set up a commission of inquiry to look at the possible alternatives – though none of them would come into force until after the end of the next parliament.
While Labour favours a postmortem estate tax, the Conservatives advocate an £8,000 voluntary one-off premium at 65 to pay for all future care, while the Liberal Democrats propose a mixed scheme, with the state picking up some of the costs, and the rest being met by the patient “topping up” their cover.
Age Concern and Help the Aged said the government’s proposals were important, but they said ministers had to plan to deal with a £1.75 billion shortfall expected in care budgets over the next two years.
Already it has emerged in the detail of the documentation produced yesterday by the government that some of the promises made will be paid for by a £100 million cut in an allowance paid to the disabled.
Questioned in the House of Commons yesterday, Mr Darling appeared irritated that his future spending pledges – where he was widely portrayed subsequently as saying that he would be “tougher than Thatcher” – had been compared to those of the former Conservative prime minister. His hardline comments were seen to be at odds with Labour’s ambitions to paint the Conservatives as the party of cutbacks.