Politics live blog – Monday 4 July 2011

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen including the launch of the report from Andrew Dilnot’s commission on funding of care and support 10.15am: More questions. Q: Why did you not impose a cap on the amount people would have to spend on hotel costs? Could someone end up losing their home to pay these costs? Dilnot says that if you are living at home, you pay for your food and accommodation. It would be unfair if people in care homes did not have to pay these costs. The report says these “hotel” costs should be capped at between £7,000 and £10,000. These charges are reasonable because pension credit guarantees an income of just over £7,000 to people in retirement. Q: The report recommends implementation from 2013. Would you be disappointed if this were to slip to 2014 or beyond? Dilnot says the report say it should be implemented “with pace”. The commission used this phrase because it sounded “modern and thrusting”, he jokes. The system does need reforming. In some respects, it is the last vestiges of the Poor Law. It would be naive to expect all parties to back the idea immediately. Dilnot says he will not be disappointed if the white paper arrives by Easter of next year. (A few moments ago Dame Jo Williams said she hoped it would come by the end of the year.) He would like implementation to start by 2014. But he is not too worried about the precise date. Lord Warner says the commission was asked to report within a year, so that the government could legislate in the next session of parliament. He assumes that is still the plan. But some measures could be implemented more quickly, he says. 10.09am: The questions are still going on. Q: Is there anything in your plans to stop people going to the most expensive care homes available? Dilnot says a cap could provide people with a “perverse incentive” to go to a very expensive home, so that they reach the £35,000 cap quickly. But Dilnot says he is proposing a system that takes into account what reasonable spending would be. Q: In the light of Southern Cross, do you have any thoughts on how care sector regulation could be improved? Dame Jo Williams says Southern Cross raises questions about whether or not there is a role for an economic regulator in the sector. Q: Who should people consult for advice on this area? Lord Warner says the commission backs a Law Commission proposal for councils to be given a statutory duty to provide advice on care 10.00am: Dilnot is still taking questions. Q: At what age do you envisage people starting to take out insurance for their care costs? Dilnot says at the moment people cannot plan for anything. At the moment people build up wealth in their homes and in their pensions. It might be sensible to see if those saving vehicles could be linked to saving to cover the costs of care. Q: What will you do if the report is kicked into the long grass? What will your response be? “Astonishment”, says Dilnot. Dilnot asks Dame Jo Williams how the care sector would feel if the report were kicked into the long grass. (Williams is chair of the Care Quality Commission.) Williams says people want more than talk. “It’s time for change.” People need to be able to plan. “It’s time for action,” she says. She hopes and believes that the government will publish a white paper by the end of the year. If the government were not to do this, then “disappointment” would not be the right word. The commission would be “disgusted”, she says. Dilnot says he wants the government to talk to interest groups and the other parties. He wants cross-party consensus. These are not “easy things” to do. But he is “confident” that something will happen. 9.52am: Q: The report mentions the possibility of a specific tax for pensioners to fund this. What are you proposing? (I’ve just found this section. It’s on page 74. It says the government could fund the proposal by raising extra money through taxation, by reprioritising existing expenditure or by introducing a specific tax increase. On this, it says “it would make sense for this [tax] to be paid at least in part by those who are benefiting directly from the reforms. In particular, it would seem sensible for at least a part of the burden to fall on those over state pension age.”) Dilnot says his report deliberately does not make recommendations on this because this is a “political decision”. Q: Would women have to pay higher premiums to pay for their care (because they live longer)? Dilnot says women would be the main beneficiaries of these changes, because they are more likely to have significant care needs. He says we will have to “wait and see” what products the financial services industry produce. 9.50am: Dilnot says the report does not just cover funding. It also proposes a major information campaign to improve the information and advice available to people about care. Carers need more support, he says. The system of assessing people’s care needs should be made more consistent too, he says. Dilnot is now taking questions. 9.42am: Dilnot says he has been studying means tests for 30 years. He illustrates the way the current means test works, with a chart showing a straight line dropping after £23,250 – because at that point people lose all their assets if they need to pay for care. Dilnot says they had a debate in the commission about when it was right to use the term “cliff edge”. This really is a cliff edge, he says. It’s crazy. The commission is proposing a fairer system. People with assets worth more than £150,000 would only have to pay up to £35,000 in care costs, he says. But the cap would be lower for people with fewer assets. For example, for people with £40,000, it should be set at £9,000; for those with £50,000 it would be set at £12,000. 9.37am: Dilnot says people told the commission they were “frightened” of the future because they did not know what costs they would face. At the moment, if you face care costs of £150,000, the worst position to be is right in the middle of the index of wealth distribution. This group face the risk of losing 84% of their assets, he says. (The politics of this chart are fascinating. It explains exactly why this is such a “Middle England” issue. It’s in the report, on page 36.) 9.35am: Dilnot is illustrating his opening remarks with charts projected onto a screen. It’s a bit like an Institute for Fiscal Studies briefing. Dilnot, of course, did used to run the IFS. One person in 10 aged 65 will face care costs of more than £100,000, he says. But at the moment there is no insurance system that enables people to cover this risk. The current system is “under enormous pressure”, he says. 9.30am: Dilnot is starting his press conference now. He is on the platform with the two other members of his commission, Lord Warner and Dame Jo Williams. Dilnot starts by saying that we should be celebrating the fact the people are living for longer. His report says that the number of people aged 85 and over in England is expected to double to 2.4m over the next 20 years. (The report only covers England, although Dilnot’s commission has consulted the devolved administrations about its plans.) Spending on social care is currently only £14bn, he says. Total government spending is about £700bn. It’s good to bear that in mind, Dilnot says. 9.17am: I’m at the QE2 centre in Westminster, in a suite where the press conference is due to start in about 10 minutes. The report itself is only 80 pages long, but the commission has published a second document, running to 195 pages, containing its supporting evidence. Dilnot has already given us the key points. (See 8.40am.) Here are some other findings and recommendations that stand out. • Dilnot’s claim that his plans would cost £1.7bn is based on the government capping the amount that people have to contribute to their care costs at £35,000. But the report suggests any figure between £25,000 and £50,000 would be an acceptable level for the cap. A £50,000 would cost the government just £1.3bn, while a £25,000 cap would cost £2.2bn. • Dilnot says that, under his plans for a new cap on costs and a higher means-testing threshold “no one going into care would have to spend more than 30% of their assets on their care costs”. Under the current system, people face losing up to 90% of their assets. • Dilnot says the government has already put more money into adult social care. But he says this money is not all getting through. “The impact of the wider local government settlement appears to have meant that the additional resources have not found their way to social care budgets in some areas,” the report says. • Anyone who enters adulthood with a care and support need – ie, a severe disability – should be eligible to free state support without being subject to a means test, the report says. The proposals has not been trailed in advance, but for some families it could turn out to be hugely significant. 8.52am: I’m off to the Dilnot press conference now. There’s an embargo until 9.30am, and so I won’t be posting until then. In the meantime, here’s a short reading list. • A Guardian interview with Andrew Dilnot • An article by David Brindle and Tom Clark in the Guardian explaining the background to today’s announcement • A report put out by the Dilnot comission explaining the responses to its consultation (pdf) 8.40am: The long-awaited report from Andrew Dilnot’s commission on funding of care and support is being published later this morning but Dilnot has just been on the Today programme and he’s spilled the beans on the main outline of what he’s proposing. Here are the main points. • Care costs should be capped at £35,000, Dilnot says. That means people would not have to pay any more than that for their care. (At the moment people can face unlimited bills.) But this figure would be means-tested, and for people with limited assets the cap would be lower. • So-called “hotel costs” would also be capped . Under Dilnot’s plan, although care costs would be capped at £35,000, people would still have to pay the cost of food and accommodation – as they would if they were healthy and able to look after themselves at home. But Dilnot says that the cost of these charges should be capped at between £7,000 and £10,000 a year to stop care homes raising fees excessively. • The means-test threshold should be raised to £100,000 . At the moment people have to pay for their own care if they have assets [ie, a home] worth more than £23,250. Dilnot says this figure should be raised to £100,000. • The total cost of the package would be £1.7bn a year. Dilnot insisted that as affordable. It was one four-hundredth of total public spending, he said. • Dilnot insisted that the government was not going to ditch his plans . On his Telegraph blog this morning , Benedict Brogan said the idea was “DOA” [dead on arrival] because it was going to cost too much. But Dilnot rejected this. “I have spoken with all the main players in this area,” he said. “I do not think that’s the position we are in.” He said he thought there would be a white paper on this subject next spring and that, although the government was unlikely to start funding the scheme before 2014, “by then we are almost certain to be seeing some shift”. • Dilnot said the current system was flawed . “At the moment there’s a massive market failure,” he said. “There’s a big area of our lives where you cannot get any risk coverage.” Dilnot is holding a press conference at 9.30am. I’ll be covering it live on the blog, and focusing on the report, and the reaction to it, for most of the morning. Later I’ll start to broaden out and focus on some of the other politics around. Here’s a full list of what’s coming up today. 9.30am: Andrew Dilnot publishes his report on the funding of care and support at an off-camera press briefing. 10am: Andrew Lansley , the health secretary, speaks at the Faculty of Public Health annual conference. 10am: William Hague attends the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the US embassy. 10.15am: The Labour MP Graham Allen launches his government-commissioned report on early intervention . In an article for the Guardian on Saturday , Iain Duncan Smith warmly welcomed Allen’s proposals. 2pm: The NHS Future Forum publishes a report with recommendations on changes to the health bill. As usual, I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm. House of Commons Carers Social care Long-term care Older people Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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