Updated

Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 27

BBC Verify Sizes 4 England Care Reform Options at £1.3 Billion to £19 Billion a Year

Updated

Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 27

BBC Verify Sizes 4 England Care Reform Options at £1.3 Billion to £19 Billion a Year

Q: With a staggering £19 billion price tag, who will ultimately foot the bill to save England's collapsing social care system?

No one knows yet, because the £19bn figure is only a cost estimate for the most ambitious model and no government funding plan has been agreed. What is clear is that England has only a limited number of realistic ways to pay: higher general taxation, a dedicated levy on workers and employers, more borrowing, greater contributions from individuals and families through means-testing, or some blend of those. Past reform efforts have failed precisely because ministers could not secure agreement on that trade-off. The political pressure points are already visible. Burnham has said he wants major reform but has not set out how to fund it. Opponents are pressing him to rule out tax rises and extra borrowing, while campaigners argue that leaving families to shoulder costs through home sales and out-of-pocket payments is the unfairness reform is meant to solve. Earlier ideas have included a health and social care levy, a compulsory inheritance-based contribution, and insurance-style systems like those used in Germany and Japan. In practice, if England moved to an NHS-style national care service, the bill would ultimately fall on the public one way or another: taxpayers directly, workers and employers through a levy, households through reduced inheritance or higher personal contributions, or future taxpayers through borrowing. The unresolved question is not whether someone will pay, but how that burden will be shared between the state, individuals and families.

3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 27

Four reform models for England’s social care system span from a lifetime cost cap to a national care service, with estimated annual costs ranging from £1.3 billion-£2.2 billion under the 2011 Dilnot plan to about £19 billion by 2036.
The review comes as the system is widely seen as underfunded and unfair, with Age UK estimating 2 million older people in England have some unmet social care need.
A more generous means test—raising the residential care asset threshold from £23,250 to £100,000—was costed by Boris Johnson’s government at £1.8 billion a year over three years, while free personal care on a Scottish model is estimated at £7.5 billion a year by 2036.
Past efforts repeatedly stalled over funding and politics: David Cameron delayed a care-cost cap, Theresa May dropped a plan attacked as a 'dementia tax,' and Labour’s national care service ideas were criticized as a 'death tax' or left undefined.
Andy Burnham says he does not want to leave office without substantial change, but the latest Labour government previously asked Louise Casey to report on reform only in 2028, underscoring how unresolved the issue remains.