Is ending the triple lock to fund a care service fair....

[mids2019]

To me this is actually not a hugely left wing proposal as middle classes with occupational and private pensions will not notice the reduced increases in state pension significantly.

However poorer pensioners with little other pension provision may be impacted a lot to essentially fund a care service that will be disprotioanrly help the middle classes as their life expectancy is greater.

Is it fair that our poorest pensioners get less to support a care service which would mean a millionaire pensioner would not nèed to sell their assets to access it?

How many millionaire pensioners are there? I’m tired of being expected to give disproportionately so those who refuse to give any can have their supposed share. Not everyone can be levelled up.

Got to be done. The problem is Labour are destroying growth and jobs so there's no money and the tax base is shrinking. If you import more and more people that will need to be supported by the state (as Mahmood now intends) then there's less money to spend on things like pensions.

This thread is probably better in the Politics section perhaps.

I see it as the first step to the state pension becoming means tested like care currently is, I’m not expecting to qualify for state pension in my 70s because I’ve been paying into a workplace pension since I got my first job.
They’ve got to do something about the cost of care, my aunt’s care home (dementia) costs over £1k a week and she’s showing no signs of physical decline! If nothing changes the government will be footing that bill in 3 years when her house sale money runs out.
Half a million quid doesn’t go far in elderly care…

Actually the people it will support are those who's only real asset is their house. Or people with little bit of savings.

Who are trying to hold of people going into care because of a relatively small amount of savings.
I know people who have been left in quite dangerous, neglectful situations because family knew money would run out and council were refusing to fund.

The £16k a couple are allowed to have in savings probably hasn't changed in about 30 years, ie I remember Grandparents going on about it, now my parents generation are also going on about it

Actually is £16k each

Good point.

I am actually a little surprised a labour party has went for this solution and the conservatives aren't immediately attacking it (though the unions are). I guess the Labour Party could have done something with inheritance tax for funding?

I guess if you are well middle aged couple with aged pensioners with significant property wealth then you will sit easy about you inheritance not being eaten by care fees. There are actually many millionaire pensioners due to increasing property prices and general asset wealth and I don't know if this was the demographic a left wing party was aiming to support?

Pensions will rise with inflation, I would guess, which might mean some years it will rise with the triple lock rate.

So this alone won’t fund social care.

This is so badly thought out, once social care is free the demand will be so great that it will be a two tier system, but like private health care, or nursery there will be those lucky ones that get the free spaces, but additional extras, and expensive luxury care homes will still be funded privately. It will be a mess.

There will also be a 10% death tax on all estates. And there still won’t be enough money or resources.

But it will get rid of the triple lock.

Ending the triple lock will not pay for social care! Its way more expensive than the extra pennies they give to pensioners

Ii don't think there is an easy answer to this but won't a breaking of the triple lock lead to general increased pensioner poverty. There is no means testing so you could get a hypothetical example of Mick Jaggers care home fees being paid through a general reduction in state pension when his family could afford the fees??

I’m not against removing the triple lock in principle, but would want to have it clearly set out what the “saved” money would be used for.

The cynic in me suspects that there’s more than an element of wanting to force people to downsize their homes to free up cash to live on and thus freeing up more “family” properties for the housing market to it.

Either individuals pay for the care they need or a wealth/inheritance tax is needed. It can't come out of cost savings because it's way too expensive and there will be strict rules about eligibility. There is no magic solution that doesn't cost and it's time the electorate stopped waiting for one.

The country has champagne tastes on a (shrinking) lemonade budget

there are more and more people dependent on the state and not contributing. Labour politicians absolutely refuse to tackle it and so more and more services don’t work and the country will go bankrupt.

There will always be people who prefer to fund their own social care to access higher standards, just like healthcare. The wealthiest won’t settle for the standard the state deems adequate. It’s high time the triple lock went,

It would take far more than the triple lock.

As OP states it is unfair to expect those who are poorer, and much more likely to die earlier to subsidise those who are richer and much more likely to live longer lives.

Add to this it's the poorer members of society who will actually be doing the social care - and they will not be paid well for it.

So it's a double whammy for the poor - hard, poorly paid work leading to health problems earlier in life (muscoskeletal etc.) and likely a shorter period benefitting from retirement. These people would have had funded social care anyway because they are unlikely to have significant wealth.

For the wealthy, they get someone to look after their parents, grandparents, great grandparents - who isn't them of course, because they do jobs that are less likely to cause health issues. They then get someone else to fund the care, despite their elders having more than enough money to fund it themselves and then - fantastic, they get to reap the unearned inheritance that has been saved by them not having to pay for the care their parents took.

It is unfair, it is not in the interests of working people.

Instead the pay your way model needs to stay - and in fact, NI needs to be paid into older age, winter fuel needs limiting and triple lock needs to go.

I don’t think downsizing is inherently a bad thing though.

Downsizing is a good thing because older people who have property wealth but not other wealth find it very difficult to afford to maintain a larger property when retired. They cling to it, despite it being clearly unsuitable for their needs.

In addition to that they require more care when in an unsuitable property - in a smaller flat or property there will be fewer hazards and they will not have to risk themselves trying to climb up ladders to clean/maintain - which they do try.

Larger properties are also more likely to be rural or further apart, making it harder to arrange for care companies, or more expensive and making them more isolated than a more suitable home.

What’s that statistic I’ve seen on here about using 90%+ of your NHS use in the last 3 years of your life?

It seems a false economy to me, making pensioners poorer. You’ll just make them sicker and use up more of the NHS?

There are so many more ways to generate money to pay for social care. Taxing big companies, zero benefits for anyone who does not have a British passport, not funding wars. That’s a good start!

I think, as an almost pensioner, that the Triple Lock is inherently unfair.

Pensioners, all of those who receive state pension, receive an annual uplift at a minimum of 2.5%; the last one was 4.8%.

Many, many, working people can only dream of an annual income rise of 4.8% .

But dropping it is not going to fund social care, which Burnham has said needs to be ‘free at point of delivery’.

We have free personal care in Scotland, whether at home or in residential care.

But what that means is that the care sector struggles to provide care , freely, to all those who need it. They have neither staff nor budget.

The cost is partially funded by our higher income tax ( along with free prescriptions, bus travel and anything else the MSPs can think of to win a vote). It’s still shit.

One of the arguments against the current system is that the self funders subsidise LA funded care home residents. If the argument against this proposal is that it's regressive perhaps we should stick with the current method.
NB my mum is currently in a dementia care home self funded at £1700 per week. Her very modest home is being sold to fund it and I fully expect she will live long enough to see the minimum savings left.

I can pretty confidently say that abolishing the triple lock won't end up funding social care any more than the abolition of the WFA would have funded the NHS as per Streeting's claim that it would.

Good move, Labour. Alienate the demographic that reliably votes with less than three years to an election.

Great post and I am surprised Andy (man of the left?) Burnham may take this approach. Maybe there will be future changes to inheritance tax though......

But once their pension goes beyond £12k ish, it will get taxed and go back to the government anyway

Will losing the triple lock fund care in the same way that vat on school fees funds state education?

@Cheese55 No, it has been confirmed that pensioners with only the state pension will be exempt from paying tax, even if above threshold

Lucky them eh?

https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Reeves-confirms-state-pension-will-remain-tax-free-for-those-with-no-other%20income.php

Only 20% of it. As a recipient of the triple lock I think it’s inherently unfair and needs to stop but it will take about a decade to make the projected £20million saving. The government needs to be much braver.