Focus today was on Parliament. But as was just explaining on Newsnight just as important were the government’s announcements on the social care plan which were quietly unveiled as the PM was at the liaison committee....
There were two bits to the PM’s announcement back in September 1) a cap of £86k on lifetime care costs (though not complete as doesn’t include bed and board for care homes) and 2) the means test which helps households with less than £100k in assets pay for weekly costs.
What the government announced today was that those two things won’t intersect. Ie that the means test payments will not count towards reaching the £86k cap- only payments an individual makes themselves will.
If the means test had counted towards the kitty someone (poorer) in receipt of the means test would have reached the £86k faster and had to use less of their own resources to get there.
Best way of explaining is it by way of example- household of £1million in assets is unaffected, they found out what they needed to in September. They have the £86k cap and the state will pick up much of the rest over that sum. You probably won’t need to sell your house.
But if you have a household set of assets of say £80k, this announcement will affect you. Because it’ll take longer than it would have done for you to reach the £86k. So you have the means test to help with your weekly costs but it doesn’t help you get to the magic cut off number
That means at the least you’re going to have to eat into more of your own assets for longer and/or worse you have to sell your house before you get to the £86k to meet your share of the contributions.
The government says it has done this so as to prevent a person reaching the £86k too rapidly and unfairly- but others would argue that was the point of the means test. Effectively to help a poorer out twice.
The danger with a cap was that it was always going to help protect a bigger % of a rich person’s assets. The argument will be this change makes that worse. Ie person with a £1m house has much of their estate protected. Person with £85k house may loses a bigger % of theirs.
Interestingly this is a change which will have to be voted on in the House. Will be very interesting to see how it affects the already simmering tension between older/southern and newer/northern Tory MPs...
Government told us this tonight 
And more here from Torsten (who we heard from in my piece tonight)
https://twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1460986321871294479
On this, Andrew Dilnot (who originally recommended a cap) told Parliament today: "I particularly regret the main announcement that was made yesterday which removes a central element of progressivity, which we did think was an important part of the structure.”
Dilnot went on: “everybody with assets of less than £186,000 would do less well under what govt is proposing than the proposals that we made and the proposals that were legislated for. That was a big change announced yesterday."
And, here's the kicker: "It finds savings exclusively from the less well-off group.”
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