Boris Johnson is facing growing Tory resistance over his decision to water down a new cap on social care costs.
Conservative MPs are demanding the Government rethink a change to the Prime Minister’s social care plans which was slipped out last week.
Small print relating to the reforms means that means-tested support from local authorities for the less well off will no longer count towards the £86,000 cap.
That means they will have to spend more of their own money on care before they reach the lifetime limit.
Andrew Dilnot, the original social care tsar who made recommendations a decade ago on how to improve the sector, blasted the change and said it means the less well off won’t get any benefit from the cap.
A crunch vote on the matter is expected to be held in the House of Commons and the Prime Minister is under pressure to perform a U-turn.
However, Health Secretary Sajid Javid insisted that everyone would be better off under the new system.
It had been hoped that the imposition of a cap on lifetime care costs would spare countless pensioners the prospect of having to sell their homes to pay for residential care.
But the policy paper published by the Government last week revealed that it’s less likely to help those who currently get free support from the State under a means test because that contribution won’t be included in deciding when they’ve reached the cap.
So a poor pensioner getting state support would have to spend £86,000 of their own money on extra care before they were deemed to have hit the limit.
The Government said the move was needed to ensure people didn’t reach the cap at an artificially faster rate than what they contribute.
It said a new much more generous means test, which increases to £100,000 from £23,250 the amount elderly people can hold in assets before they have to pay for all their care themselves was the main means of supporting people with lower levels of assets.
But Andrew Dilnot told the Treasury Select Committee that 40 per cent of the elderly who have care needs will now get no benefit from the cap.
But does anyone believe a word this government says? Perhaps not, but a great number of people still believe what the media tell them.
It’s just another election promise broken, along with stopping illegal immigrants and the triple lock.
We know who will be better off, and I guarantee it won’t be Joe Public, and the next Prime Minister will have a lot of work to undo and the wrongs done by Boris Johnson and his Hannibal crew, and it’s just more lies from Boris and his followers.
And it looks like that in Boris Johnson’s eyes that migrants come first and are in front of the line with their extended families and six-bedroom houses.
When the NHS was first started it promised cradle to grave care and most of the elderly people had home helps who were provided free of charge to do the daily chores that allowed numerous people to continue to live in their own homes quite comfortably. Now, care costs are exorbitant and don’t leave people with any money to pass on to their children – bring back the good old days, please.
It’s just a case of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 