Andrew Dilnot, who reviewed social care for coalition, expresses alarm at proposal that will mean elderly are ‘completely on their own’

The chair of the long-term care commission has attacked the Conservatives’ plan to make more elderly people pay for social care, saying it would leave people “completely on their own” to deal with future costs.



Under the plans to be unveiled in the Tory manifesto on Thursday, people with more than £100,000 in assets will have to pay for their own care out of the value of their homes rather than relying on the council to cover the cost of visits by care workers.

Sir Andrew Dilnot, the economist who reviewed social care for the coalition government in 2011, expressed alarm at the plans and claimed they showed a misunderstanding of the problem.

General election 2017: May launches manifesto with social care controversy – politics live Read more

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Dilnot said: “I’m very surprised that there is such specific information that appears to be new thinking, that I’d argue shows a less than full understanding of the problems.”

The Dilnot commission proposed a general cap of £35,000 on the amount an individual would have to pay for their own care costs during their lifetime. By contrast, the Conservative plan proposes a floor on an individual’s savings and assets, including their homes, of £100,000, above which they must pay.

Dilnot said such an approach failed to “tackle the biggest problem of all in social care, which is that at the moment people are faced with a position of no control”.

He said: “It’s a bit like saying you can’t insure your house against burning down. If it does burn down then you are completely on your own, you have to pay for all of it until you are down to the last £100,000 of all of your assets and income, so it is just not answering the problem.”

Dilnot, a former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that by refusing to implement a cap, the Conservatives would be leaving people without any protection against care costs.

“So people will be left helpless, knowing that what will happen is that if they are unlucky enough to suffer the need for care costs they will be entirely on their own until they are down to the last £100,000 of all of their wealth including their house,” he said.

“I do feel very disappointed for all of us, the millions of people who are very, very anxious about this, and I’m a bit surprised, because what social care is is a classic example of a market failure where the private sector cannot do what’s needed.”

Dilnot said the idea ran counter to Theresa May’s promise that the state would step in when markets were broken. “This was an absolute open goal for that kind of approach and it seems to have been missed,” he said, adding that the plans would help some people but leave the majority of those being cared for in their own homes worse off.

How much will the average person pay for social care under Conservative proposals? It costs around £150,000 for four years in residential care on the outskirts of London, or £109,000 in Lancashire. Someone who needs 14 hours of care a week at home could pay £45,000 in London over that period and £34,000 in Lancashire. Under the Conservative proposals, anyone with assets worth over £100,000 will pay – but the payment can be deferred until after death and deducted from their estate. Averages are tricky, but the situation is getting worse. The number of people in England and Wales dying from dementia are expected to almost quadruple to 160,000 by 2040. Philip Inman



He said: “The changes just fail to tackle the central problem that scares most people. You are not tackling the big issue that people can’t pool their risks. There is nothing that anybody can do to pool their risk with the rest of the population, you just have to hope that you are not unlucky.



“It is not providing insurance. You could easily have care costs of £300,000 each if you are a couple; you are not able to cover that extreme risk which is what we all want to do faced with anything else which we can insure. That’s the market failure and these changes do nothing to address that.”

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, confirmed the Conservatives were planning to abandon a previous manifesto pledge to cap care costs.

Speaking from West Yorkshire, where the Tories will launch their manifesto, he told Today: “We’re dropping it because we don’t think it is fair because you could have a situation where someone who owns a house worth £1m or £2m, and has expensive care costs of perhaps £100,000 or £200,000, ends up not having to pay those care costs because they are capped. And those costs get borne by taxpayers and we don’t think that’s fair on different generations.

“Everyone will be confident that they can pass on £100,000 to their children and grandchildren. The way we are going to pay for that is by making the rules the same for people who go into care homes as for people who get care at their home, and by means-testing the winter fuel payment, which currently isn’t.”

Hunt said the plan showed the Conservatives were capable of making difficult choices. He said: “We are saying when we are deciding whether the state should contribute to the cost of your care all your assets, including your house, should be taken into account. At the moment, if you go into a care home you could get down to £23,000, now we are quadrupling that amount.”

When it was suggested the plans amounted to a death tax delayed, Hunt said: “It is not a tax. We are saying that the assets that you build up over your lifetime should be used to pay for your own care costs.”