SOCIAL CARE

Does the cap fit?

In the wake of Theresa May’s announcement of altered proposals on social care last week Liam Booth-Smith questions whether introducing a cap on costs is a fair and sustainable solution.

Modern prime ministers must secretly loathe Churchill. Much as modern presidents do Kennedy. They were wonderful orators, capable of turning a phrase so it caught the light. Churchill gave us many great missives, one of his lesser credited was ‘from the cradle to the grave'. Oh how this haunts us. The post 1945 welfare state just wasn't built to factor in the sort of life longevity we're experiencing now. The political land mine that is social care was laid into its foundations and last week Theresa May set it off. What was meant to be a controlled explosion quickly got out of hand.

Do I believe this will alter the eventual outcome of the election? No, but it could diminish Theresa May's majority. What it has done is turn a ‘miss-sold' policy into a potentially bad one. By introducing a cap on costs, while lifting the floor on payments to £100,000 there is now a danger the proposal has become fiscally unviable.

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