Dear Labour, older people must be protected, not used to plug your financial black hole

The Conservative government left us with a gap in public finances to the tune of £22bn and urgent steps must be taken to close it up. So says our new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. 

Earlier this week, she claimed her predecessor Jeremy Hunt had hidden a massive shortfall in public money and announced a raft of measures designed to “fix the mess”. 

As the Chief Executive of Pilgrims’ Friend Society, a charity seeking to champion the needs of older people, two of these measures in particular left me smarting because they suggest that again we risk having a government that won’t step up to the challenge of reforming and adequately funding adult social care. The current system is at breaking point and only hasn’t broken because care is being rationed – Age UK estimate that 1.5m people need care but aren’t getting it. Just think of the impact that is having on older people and their relatives.

Two problems

The first measure is the decision to scrap the cap on care costs to the individual. As it stands, anyone who has savings/assets of over £23,250 has to shoulder the full cost of their care. This feels particularly unfair as anyone with dementia, a condition that can be long-term and require round-the-clock care in a care home, can end up paying hundreds of thousands of pounds. Those with what are regarded as medical conditions, however, for example cancer, would have all their care costs covered by the state. This is a healthcare lottery of the worst possible kind.

A cap of £86,000 on the costs of a person’s lifetime care had been due to come into force in October 2025. The idea had its roots in proposals made by Andrew Dilnot back in 2011. But since the report, the cap has been postponed repeatedly and now, apparently, thrown out altogether.

Some people might argue that it’s fair enough that if people live longer they should be prepared to pay their way. But in most others walks of life – think of insurance or NHS care – we protect people against events that have massive negative financial implications. Without a cap the richest in society who can comfortably afford to cover their care will be all right, as will be anyone who has less than £23,250 when the state pays for care from day one. But most of us are left vulnerable to extraordinary costs with financial hardship passed on down the generations. Do we really want to create a society where only the very richest can have peace of mind about care? Are we happy for illnesses to be on some kind of roulette wheel – fine if you land on one but not another? Wouldn’t it be better and kinder just to look after everyone in the same way?

The second measure that bodes ill for older people is the means-testing of Winter Fuel Payments. The government proposes to link eligibility for these payments to Pension Credit, a benefit available to the least well-off older people. That might sound reasonable until you realise that 40 per cent of people who are eligible for Pension Credit currently don’t claim it, often because they don’t realise they qualify/can’t navigate the systems. So many older people who need help will be afraid to put the heating on. The result? More older people who are colder and therefore more likely to get ill, and more likely to go to hospital, resulting in colossal bills for the NHS. It’s self-defeating short-termism and I urge Ms Reeves to reconsider or to campaign to increase the take up of Pension Credit.

A better way

To get a glimpse of a better way let’s turn a biblical principle. In Galatians, Paul urges us to “carry one another’s burdens” (6:2). That means fair and equitable funding for care. It also needs Christians to lead others by sharing the burden within our own communities. The church should be a place where the needs of older people are, as far as possible, met, whether that’s going round for a cup of tea with an older church member and enabling them to experience the health-giving benefits of company, or whether that’s reaching further into our communities through things like lunch clubs and befriending schemes.

If society starts to carry the burdens of loneliness and isolation then government funding will reach further and be more effective in meeting the more complex needs and challenges of older age. Financially, the scale of the problem may seem astronomical, but the solutions are not out of this world.

For more information see Pilgrims’ Friend Society’s ‘Empowering Communities to Care’, which sets out ways to unlock local resources and transform how our society cares for an ageing population.