A Conservative minister insisted Boris Johnson did not lie to win the last election and instead was “boiling down a complicated message” around care home fees.
Business minister Paul Scully was speaking on Sky News about the latest Tory election promise to appear broken – a “guarantee” that “no one needing care has to sell their home to pay for it”.
Pressed by presenter Kay Burley to repeat the 2019 manifesto pledge, Scully refused to do so, arguing he “could not tell” what different people will end up doing to pay for their care.
Lies?
Since the general election, the Tories dropped the promise, saying instead that UK people will only have to sell their homes after they die, through new rules deferring payment.
But Scully rejected Burley’s suggestion that the prime minister “was telling lies to win the election”, or that Johnson’s promises were “misleading”.
He argued the prime minister was just “boiling down a complicated message, which is why social care hasn’t been dealt with in at least 10 years, to something people could appreciate.”
“I think details are what’s important”, he insisted, but was quickly challenged by Burley, who said: “The detail is you either have to sell your house or you don’t! You can’t make promises you don’t keep time and time and time again and expect people to vote for you at the next election.”
Scully replied: “But if we boil it all down to one line, then you get to a situation – you’ll never ever tackle a situation with social care.
“There’s a reason social care has not been sorted for 10 years – it’s because it’s complicated, it’s thorny, it deserves more than a single headline.”
Care fees
Under plans by the Tory government, a new care home cap will negatively impact the less wealthy.
People in England will not have to pay more than £86,000 for care during their lifetime regardless of wealth from October 2023 – which means anyone with less than £100,000 in assets, or whose assets could drop under the threshold before they hit the cap, will be affected.
The proposals mean poorer people with just over £100,000 in assets will pay more than under the previous proposal, according to The Mirror.
And although research carried out by Labour showed average homeowners in over 100 constituencies in the north will be affected whilst none in the south would, Boris Johnson claimed his government’s proposals are “incredibly generous”.
Speaking to Times Radio, Christian Wakeford, Tory MP for Bury South said: “When we were talking about the tax increase, the levy introduction, whichever term you want to refer to it as, we borrowed a lot of money because of Covid, the NHS is in very stark contrast to where it was pre-pandemic. So I wasn’t necessarily against an increase.
“What I wanted to see was a plan and it feels like we didn’t have one then, I’m not fully sure we’ve got one now, but then to change, to move the goalposts after we’ve already been introduced this, it’s not something I’m particularly comfortable with.”
“Especially when one of the main messages for introducing this levy was, you won’t need to sell your house for care, to get to a point where unfortunately you might need to and (it’s) arguably our least well-off in society, our least well-off voters, again it’s not something I’m particularly comfortable with.”
Related: Government warned of a fresh rebellion on Monday if they press ahead with social care reforms
