Sell up, Mum and Dad
by Richard Reeves
Social care for the elderly is not typically a subject to gets political pulses racing. But over the last week there’s been a battle raging in Westminster over the question of how to pay for the care needs of an ageing population. The demographic timebomb is exploding just as the public coffers run dry. More and more people will need care over the coming years – and that care will have to be paid for. The only fair and sensible solution is to force pensioners to sell their homes to pay for their care: but no politician wants to face this unpalatable truth.
Labour has grandly announced plans for a National Care Service, providing free care, largely delivered in the home, to all elderly people. This sounds great, but there’s one snag – it will cost a lot of money. And money, for anyone who missed every news bulletin for the last two years, is what the Government does not have. The Tories reckon Labour’s figures don’t add up but are being coy about their own plans.
The baby-boomer generation, who will need care over the coming decades, has done very well out of the British housing market. Their property assets should be used to pay for their care, even if this means their children missing out on a juicy, tax-free inheritance. The alternative, of paying for the care from general taxation, is deeply unfair. Why should a cleaner earning £9,000 a year pay through her taxes for my care, just so that I can pass on a house worth half a million quid to my children? I know we Brits are obsessed with the capital stored in bricks and mortar, and our god-given right to pass it on to our kids. But this madness has to stop. The care of wealthy homeowners should not be funded by hard-working taxpayers. I’m sorry Mum and Dad, but you’ll have to sell the house.
Andrew Preston
Well, my mother has in the past couple of months gone into a residential home. Her own little house, a sheltered flat, will go up for sale shortly to pay for the residential home fees. The valuation on her flat is about 145,000 . Some years ago, my father went into a nursing home, and died there after about 2 years. My mother sold their then house to pay the nursing home fees, and bought the sheltered flat with the balance left. I think this scenario is rather more likely for many people, than the half-a-million tax-free fat juicy ones that you describe. Bully for you.
Just seems so odd to me that other countries can do free social care, particularly in Scotland , where the decision was made that it was the right thing to do, and it was done. Yet, in England........ all the hand-wringing, the country that bailed out the banks with squillions..., with hardly a moments hesitation, and as the primary architects of the mess looked on sullenly from the Opposition front benches. Yuk.
W J Barnes
Strange really, you can find money for all sorts of idiot idea`s
the Dome, War and more war, the Olympic`s, ID cards, junk
NHS computer programms , Aircraft carriers , mass immigration,
but you cannot find the money to look after your elderly,
the very people who have paid their taxes to educate you all.
What a waste of money!