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?

Still free in Scotland.

Yep correct
it’s personal care only and at home
so if you need 4 visits a day that will now be free rather than having to pay for it

if you go into a care home you will still have to pay for board and accommodation which will be £££££

you may still have to sale your home or use your own money to pay for a care home

councils will still means tests you if you go into a care home

How the Proposal Affects Property and Care Home Costs

• Free Personal Care, Not Free Accommodation: The proposed NCS covers "free personal care" (such as help with washing, dressing, and eating). However, official GOV.UK guidelines clarify that the service will not cover bed and board (accommodation costs) in a care home. [, 3]
• Means-Testing Remains: For the accommodation portion of care home fees, the existing means-tested local council contributions will stay in place. [1]
• Protections for the Family Home: To deliver on Burnham’s conference promise that the system will "protect people's homes and their savings", the government has stated that:
• Councils will continue to exclude the value of a home
• from financial assessments if a partner or dependent relative still lives there.
• Deferred payment agreements will remain available. This allows the local authority to pay for care home accommodation, with the costs reclaimed later from the estate, ensuring people avoid having to sell their home during their lifetime. [1, 2]

Only 20% of the excess.

I am not sure how much saving this will make as the majority don’t go into a care home but need care in the home.

That’s exactly what he is planning

if you go into care you will still have to pay ££££££ for board and accommodation

Yes, that’s what he said in his speech

He’s hoping that people hear free care and think brilliant free care homes

he’s definitely given people a lot of HOPE even if it is bullshit 😂

it’s like that saying
how do you know when a politician is lying
he’s breathing

Nic isn’t just for state pension, it’s also for other benefit and a portion goes towards the nhs. It’s just another tax.

That’s exactly what he means

he’s very good at giving hope 😂

That’s probably cos people think they are going to get free care homes

wait till they realise thats not the case
and if you go into a care home you will still be paying ££££££ for accommodation and food

There needs to be a two pronged approach to solving the current care problem.

1. Improve access to care when it is needed. This is what AB's proposals seek to address.
2. Reduce demand for care. Some of that will happen naturally across the next 20 years as the baby boom generation 'ages out' of the population. Some of it needs to come from people ensuring they reduce their own years of frailty by doing what they can to keep themselves healthy especially during middle age. Some of it needs to come from society having an honest conversation about medical care in old age. Just because something can be treated should it be treated if treatment is just going to extend years of frailty?

I beg to differ.

All the care homes will do is put their prices up as they do once or twice a year anyway.

Look, you’re fully entitled to your own opinion but I guess there’s a few things I’d counter. When the Prime Minister talked about his upbringing, that didn’t sound like “aligning himself with hardship by association" to me (which feels a strange, cynical way to put it), it made me think we finally have a Prime Minister who understands the realities millions of people face, not just in theory, but for real. I’d also object to the idea that investing in public infrastructure is “free stuff”. And I’d definitely question the idea he wasn’t transparent on the difficult cost of his vision, given as we’re all on this thread talking about the ending of the triple lock.

To be honest, I think the idea that the emperor has no clothes is yesterday’s attack line. Tim Stanley from the Telegraph popped up on my social feed just this morning talking about how he thought the right has underestimated Burnham. So, I don’t think it’s just die hard lefties who were impressed.

If you want to think I’m lying about not having made up my mind pre speech (weird, but okay), then that’s fine. But all I can tell you is before this speech all I knew was I’d be voting against something (anyone but Reform). Now, I feel like there’s actually someone I positively want to vote for.

No it’s not fair

What’s not fair?

Oh yeah, for sure - I don’t for one minute imagine that the snap polling means the policy will be guaranteed to be popular in the long run. I guess I’m just surprised by how open the respondents seem to the triple lock being modified at all - it always gets talked about as though it’d be guaranteed electoral suicide to even countenance modifying it, but this seem to suggests other politicians could maybe have been braver about the conversation sooner.

They could get rid of the triple lock and just increase the pension with the same percentage that they award themselves.

Lol for me. Currently spending all the money my dmum spent a lifetime saving on a care home at £6k a month. Got about 3 years of money left. I pray daily that she will die before the money runs out.
Now find out that my state pension, should i live long enough to get it will be less to preserve everyone else's inheritance!
Timing is everything in life.

And other conversations. It’s positive to see a politician prepared to use his political capital on an issue that’s really important to him. I’ve missed conviction politics, it’s been missing for far too long.

I was answering the OPs question

I think the devil is in the detail. Basically at the moment the headline is he will sort out Social Care and all it will cost you is losing an element of the triple lock. This seems like an excellent deal as social care and the prospect of funding this is a massive financial burden for older people. They value the triple lock a lot but would sacrifice it to remove another huge worry.

I think the problem will come when it becomes apparent that actually abolishing the triple lock was an economic necessity to stop us accruing an unsustainable amount of public debt. It actually won't make much extra money available at all to fund such an expensive project as reforming social care. This is where I think he has been dishonest under the guise of having tough and honest conversations. He should have actually said we need to remove the triple lock because we can't afford it and someone is going to have to pay a shed load more tax or have their benefits cut if we want to reform social care to any extent.

Exactly. If you can't afford a Ferrari deciding to not buy a Ferrari doesn't mean you can use the money you've "saved" to buy a Porsche.

The big issue with the triple lock is it is totally unfunded and cannot be planned for. With pretty much all of the baby boom generation now claiming a state pension, it is threatening to sink us financially.

Separately social care has to be sorted out, there are councils falling in to bankruptcy becuase of it.