Supporting You Through Life

Last year, Eulogy Magazine asked Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to outline his position on funding for elderly care. He refused to comment. Whilst Mr. Lansley has his "pause", Eulogy examines what progress has been made to address the problems in the current system of care for the elderly.

It's all the government's fault

In 2009, Andrew Lansley - then Shadow Health Secretary - criticised the Labour Government for its “top-down” approach to running the NHS. Bureaucracy and statistics, he argued, were prioritised at the expense of services and patient care. Since becoming Health Secretary, Mr Lansley has restructured the way the NHS is funded by abolishing primary care trusts, planning to hand over £80 billion to GPs. It’s this kind of rapid and decisive action that makes the government’s failure to address widespread concerns over elderly care all the more baffling.

During the election campaign, Mr Lansley’s rhetoric focused heavily on the dangers of delay. And upon becoming Health Secretary in May last year, he appeared to maintain this stance with a promise to address the “challenges of an ageing population” with “urgent and effective reform of the funding of social care”. So what urgent and effective reform has he implemented?

These challenges are hardly a recent development. Problems in funding for elderly care have been building up for the past couple of decades. The current means-tested system, which requires people who have saved responsibly to pay for their own care, pre-dates the Labour Government of 1997. This system has forced on average 45,000 people per year to sell their homes to pay for care. During the election, all 3 parties promised to implement a home protection plan for the elderly. Coalition ministers have since been forced to admit that all options will be considered, including what has been dubbed the ‘death tax’ - a compulsory levy on estates to cover elderly care costs. Since becoming Health Secretary, Mr Lansley has set up a commission to investigate potential solutions, which, after nearly a year of deliberation, is set to deliver its verdict in July.

With Britain’s aging population expected to strain public finances further in the coming decades, this kind of delay is hardly a luxury the government can afford. Even since the commission was formed last summer, an estimated 650,000 people have turned 65, increasing the burden on the current social care system by an estimated £750 million.

"A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children... the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture." - Abraham Herschel

As July approaches, nothing has changed. Furthermore, any lingering hopes for straightforward solutions are looking increasingly farfetched. The three-person commission, chaired by economist Andrew Dilnot, has already concluded that no single “silver bullet” solution exists. Individuals, taxpayers, and family members look certain to share the burden.

“Any fantasy about 100% universal state provision – forget it,” said 70 year-old Labour peer and member of the commission Lord Warner, speaking at a conference in London organised by the think-tank, Reform.

Shock Horror - Lansley will die a sad, lonely old man unless something is done.

Lord Warner continued: “As this ageing population emerges, the working population is shrinking. My kids regularly remind me that it's not for them to keep me in the style to which I have become accustomed. That's a joke but it's also a serious point. We have to think about this a lot more clearly and the commission is thinking about that.”

“This issue is not going to go away and we are going to have to try to come up with something that is politically acceptable and workable in this area.”

Lord Warner insisted that there would always be a “safety net” of state funding to ensure that the poorest pensioners have access to the care that they need, but added: “Whatever system is chosen, individuals will have to contribute. We do not think a purely voluntary system would work.”

“We think that a partnership system where the government pays a clear sum towards care costs and then introduces ways to ensure that individuals plan ahead for their contribution, would pool resources effectively.”

This commission is not the first to have been tasked with finding answers for this increasingly urgent predicament. The most conclusive work so far in fact came from outside of the government. A 2006 King’s Fund survey found that a minimum level of care could, universally, be provided free. In cases where further care was required, the survey said, people could make contributions that would also be matched by the state. Those with low income would be supported through additional benefits. Means-testing – the major bugbear of the current system– would be scrapped.
 
In March of last year, the King’s Fund updated their 2006 survey. The same conclusion – the partnership scheme – was advised. Considering that the survey was updated with one eye on the economic crisis, one wonders if this current commission is really necessary at all, or, worse still, if it is just another way for the current government to further delay confronting the matter at hand.

It remains to be seen whether or not the present deliberation can come up with practical solutions to the long-standing problems in the provision of social care for the elderly. For now at least, Mr Lansley seems intent on a long “pause”.