Tory social care plan will leave elderly 'helpless', says former govt adviser

Thousands of elderly people will be left “helpless” under Conservative manifesto plans forcing them to pay for their own social care, said the author of a report into the issue under the last coalition government.

Sir Andrew Dilnot recommended in 2011 that the individual contribution to care costs should be capped at £35,000. Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday flattened the suggestion by including the value of a person's home in calculations as well as savings.

Under Tory plans social care would become free one someone was down to their last £100,000.

“I’m very surprised that there is such specific information that appears to be new thinking, that I’d argue shows a less than full understanding of the problems,” Dilnot told the BBC.

“It’s a bit like saying you can’t insure your house against burning down. If it does burn down then you are completely on your own, you have to pay for all of it until you are down to the last £100,000 of all of your assets and income, so it is just not answering the problem.”

"The disappointment about these proposals is that they fail to tackle the biggest problem of all in social care: there is nothing that you can do to protect yourself against care costs. So people will be left helpless, knowing that what will happen is that if they are unlucky enough to suffer the need for care costs they will be entirely on their own until they are down to the last £100,000 of all of their wealth including their house,” he said.

“I do feel very disappointed for all of us, the millions of people who are very, very anxious about this, and I’m a bit surprised, because what social care is is a classic example of a market failure where the private sector cannot do what’s needed.”

He said the Tory plan failed to tackle “the central problem that scares most people”.

“You are not tackling the big issue that people can’t pool their risks. There is nothing that anybody can do to pool their risk with the rest of the population, you just have to hope that you are not unlucky.”

“It is not providing insurance. You could easily have care costs of £300,000 each if you are a couple; you are not able to cover that extreme risk which is what we all want to do faced with anything else which we can insure. That’s the market failure and these changes do nothing to address that.”