COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Matt Hancock is advocate of plan to raise tax to cover cost of care in later life



Everyone over 40 would start contributing towards the cost of care in later life under radical plans being studied by ministers to finally end the crisis in social care, the Guardian can reveal.

Under the plan over-40s would have to pay more in tax or national insurance, or be compelled to insure themselves against hefty bills for care when they are older. The money raised would then be used to pay for the help that frail elderly people need with washing, dressing and other activities if still at home, or to cover their stay in a care home.

The plans are being examined by Boris Johnson’s new health and social care taskforce and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). They are gaining support as the government’s answer to the politically perilous question of who should pay for social care.

Sources say the principle of over-40s meeting the cost of a reformed system of care for the ageing population is emerging as the government’s preferred option for fulfilling the prime minister’s pledge just over a year ago to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”. Social care is a devolved matter but the plans could apply to the whole of the UK as they may involve the tax system.

Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, is a keen advocate of the plan. He has been championing it in discussions that have resumed recently about the government’s proposals to overhaul social care. Officials say there is a “renewed urgency” in Downing Street and the DHSC to come up with a solution.

Officials are looking into the exact mechanism by which over-40s would pay – whether through a payroll tax or insurance. But social care experts cautioned that any insurance model would have to be compulsory to ensure people paid.

However, the Treasury is understood to harbour doubts about moving in that direction. “There are vast differences of opinion within government about this,” the same source said. And it risks angering a generation who will have paid, or still be paying, off their student loans and may have a mortgage and the costs of rearing children to meet.

rebbonk wrote:Silly me, I thought that was what National Insurance was for. Silly me thought I had a contract with the government to look after me from cradle to grave.

dutchman wrote:I want my own nurse.

In fact, I've got a particular one in mind!

NHS could take over social care, swelling budget to £150bn



Social care could be brought under the control of the NHS in England in a controversial move that would cause the health service’s budget to soar to £150bn, the Guardian has learned.

Downing Street has drafted in David Cameron’s former policy chief Camilla Cavendish to help finalise proposals designed to honour Boris Johnson’s pledge to “fix the crisis in social care”.

Under plans being examined by Cavendish and ministers, the government would take responsibility for social care services away from councils in England – together with the £22.5bn in annual funding – and hand it to the NHS, the Guardian understands. On Monday night the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) denied it had plans to merge the two public services.

The proposed merger would be designed to make it easier for frail older people, as well as vulnerable children and the disabled, to access the care they need and ease the strain on an overburdened NHS.

Social care is beset by problems including a postcode lottery in the quality and availability of care, workforce shortages and the growing unviability of many providers following a decade-long Whitehall squeeze on councils’ budgets. That has deprived more than 1 million elderly people of care they would have received before 2010.

But local authorities are likely to fight merger proposals. Providing social care has been a key role and source of funding for local government for decades. One health policy expert said NHS control of social care would “decimate local government finances”.