Chancellor George Osborne was widely reported to be opposed to the extra costs.
Politicians of all major parties at Westminster have long shied away from assuming responsibility for overdue reform of Britain’s care system. In a House of Commons statement Mr Lansley said he welcomed the long-awaited review led by economist Andrew Dilnot.
His report recommends that people should be facilitated in buying specialised insurance cover – currently unavailable – and that social care costs should be capped at £35,000 with council-funded care provided to people with under £100,000 in assets. The current threshold for council-funded help is £23,250.
Mr Lansley told MPs: “In the current public spending environment, we have to consider carefully the additional cost to the taxpayer of the commission’s proposals against other funding priorities.”
Shadow Health Secretary John Healey emphasised that Labour is willing to work with the Government towards a consensus on social care.
Mr Dilnot’s key recommendations are a cap of between £25,000 and £50,000 on the amount that individuals have to contribute to their personal and social care in England and an increase from £23,500 to £100,000 in the amount of assets people can keep and still receive means-tested help.
If people need residential care they should have only to pay £7,000 to £10,000 a year towards accommodation costs.There would be a national assessment of need and entitlement would be transferable from one part of the country to another and not dependent on any one of the 152 individual local authorities currently responsible for care provision.The report says that free personal care, as available in Scotland since 1999, would simply be unaffordable especially as the number of people aged 85 and older is expected to double in the next two decades.
As it stands, the Dilnot recommendations, if implemented, are widely estimated to add £2 billion to the £27 billion cost of adult social care and disability benefits, rising to £3.6 billion by 2025.The author has said that the state stepping in to cap costs is essential if private insurers and financial services companies are to offer products helping families and individuals to budget for such care.There is no such provision at present and the current system is “confusing, unfair and unsustainable”.
The report also recognises that the additional spending will need to be funded, in part, by extra taxation.
