Nicky Morgan has defended Boris Johnson over his decision to shelve plans to overhaul social care funding in the Conservatives’ manifesto launch.

The Tories have pledged to allocate an extra £1bn a year for the social care sector as part of a cautious manifesto, while guaranteeing that no one should have to sell their home to meet the costs.

But it falls short of Johnson’s rallying cry on the steps of Downing Street when he took office, claiming “we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all … with a clear plan we have prepared”.

Theresa May was forced into a U-turn when her 2017 manifesto social care plan was labelled a “dementia tax”, and Johnson has now committed only to saying the party will “build a cross-party consensus” on how it should be funded in the long term.

Sir Andrew Dilnot, the former chair of the commission on funding of care and support, said the Tory plans were “very vague”. And the head of a thinktank has said Johnson’s pledge is too little to plug the gap needed to cater for the country’s ageing population.

However, Nicky Morgan, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS), defended Johnson’s strategy.

“There’s a very clear three-point plan that’s the £1bn extra every year, the need to build a cross-party consensus – because social care is a long-term, complex issue – But also a very clear statement, as the prime minister set out in the Question Time debate last week, that no one should have to sell their own home to pay for their care,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Asked about Johnson’s previous claim to have a plan “already prepared”, Morgan said: “There has been work going on but it’s not at a stage yet in order to be launched. I think actually what you see overall in the manifesto, and I think quite right because the second part of our campaign is about unleashing Britain’s potential, but it’s about saying we’re going to do this in a responsible, one-nation way. We’re not going to make lots of unfunded, uncosted promises.”

Pressed again on why Johnson claimed he would fix the problem four months ago with a “clear plan” but has not included it in the manifesto, Morgan said the previous government had been working on the issue, of which the prime minister may have been aware, but “it’s not there in a form to be included in the manifesto”.

Johnson has also faced scrutiny over the party’s pledge to deliver 50,000 more nurses – it has emerged that nearly 20,000 of that number include existing staff who would be encouraged to remain, or those who had left being encouraged to return.

Dilnot told Today the Conservatives’ social care plans were “really not very specific”, adding: “Four months ago we had the prime minister standing on the steps of Downing Street saying he would fix the crisis in social care once and for all with ‘a clear plan we have prepared’. And then yesterday we were told we will commit to urgently seek a cross-party consensus. So, very vague.

“If there is real energy about seeking a cross-party consensus then maybe we can get something done and that will be great, but it’s striking that there is no clear plan here.”

Sally Warren, the director of policy at the King’s Fund, said the Conservatives’ funding pledge was “a couple of billion pounds short a year” of what was required.

“The money we’ve seen from the Conservatives yesterday is not going to be enough to continue to meet demographic pressures as our population ages over the next five years,” said Warren, who is a former director of social care policy at the Department of Health.

“So the money isn’t enough, and all the money would be doing would be to continue funding the current system, and that current system is widely seen to be very unfair for people who need to use it, and it has been struggling to be able to have enough funding to deliver high quality care,” she told Today.

On how big the gap is between the Tories’ promise of an extra £1bn a year over the next five years and the amount that is needed to help the sector, Warren added: “It’s probably a couple of billion pounds short a year.”



