Homes are not assets to be passed on to children, says minister

Labour says Jackie Doyle-Price resurrected ‘dementia tax’ by saying taxpayer should not ‘prop up’ people with care needs

Homes should not be seen as assets for parents to pass to their children, a Conservative minister has said in new footage recorded from the party’s conference, which Labour said resurrected the idea of a “dementia tax”.

The social care minister, Jackie Doyle-Price, told a fringe meeting that many older people were “sitting in homes that really are too big for their needs” and said the party was still looking to make reforms to the funding of social care.

“The reality is that the taxpayer shouldn’t necessarily be propping up people to keep their property and hand it on to their children when they’re generating massive care needs,” she told the Social Market Foundation fringe in footage released by the Labour party.

Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you

 

Read more

“We’ve got to a stage where people feel that they are the custodian of an asset to give to their offspring … They shouldn’t be seen as that.”

Later in the same meeting, she added: “We are very much looking at, when the review comes up, we will be looking at the whole issue of caps and floors.”

Doyle-Price, who is MP for Thurrock, said the younger generation should not be expected to fund care for pensioners when there were already huge pressures on their finances.

“Those of us who are fortunate to have gone through university without paying anything, fortunate enough to have then bought our own homes, have been able to build up a level of wealth,” she said.

“But actually current people coming through the universities, who are going to be funding, looking after us after we have retired, have not had those advantages, and fundamentally it’s unfair to expect them to pay their own taxes to deal with that.”

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who is visiting a community centre in Shipley on Thursday, said it was “appalling” the Conservatives still expected people with dementia to sell their homes to pay for care. During the visit, Corbyn will set out Labour’s plans to establish a national care service and invest an extra £8bn in social care.

The Guardian view on the social care debacle: weak and wobbly

Editorial: It’s a crisis that urgently needs a solution, but not this one, and not like this

 

Read more

“The idea of a ‘dementia tax’ was rightly rejected by the public during the general election,” Corbyn said. “It can’t be right that if you have a heart condition you’re treated on the NHS but if you have dementia you have to pay with your home.
“This is further proof that the Conservatives are yesterday’s party, with no plan to fix our country’s problems.”

The so-called “dementia tax” in the Conservative manifesto caused an immediate backlash when the party committed to “means-testing for domiciliary care” including “the value of the family home along with other assets and income” and separately “a single capital floor, set at £100,000” so that “people will always retain at least £100,000 of their savings and assets”.

In a tense press conference during the campaign, just days after the manifesto launch, Theresa May U-turned on the policy by promising an “absolute limit” on the amount people would have to pay for their care, without specifying an amount. The prime minister insisted it was only a clarification and that “nothing has changed”.