Dear Constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about the social care crisis and the new social care levy.  On Tuesday (7 September 2021), the Prime Minister outlined a new health and social care levy to pay for reforms to the care sector and deal with the backlog of unmet clinical need in the NHS.

The tax, which will begin as a 1.25% rise in National Insurance from April 2022, was approved with the support of Government MPs on Wednesday (9 September 2021). It will become a separate tax on earned income from 2023. The Prime Minister acknowledged that this announcement breaks the Government’s 2019 manifesto commitment not to raise taxes.

While additional investment will need to be funded through tax rises, I do not agree increasing National Insurance contributions is the right way to do it. It will hit working people hard, including low earners and young people, and it will place a huge burden on businesses as they recover from the pandemic. It is for these reasons I voted against the proposal.

In my view, the taxes that pay for social care should be fair across the generations and all forms of income. Those with the broadest shoulders should pay more – not the working families now set for an unfair tax rise.

The Government said its reforms to social care will mean that, from October 2023, the cap on lifetime contribution to care costs would be set at £86,000. Anyone with assets less than £20,000 will not have to contribute to their care costs. And those with assets between £20,000 and £100,000 will be eligible for some means-tested support. A White Paper on plans to integrate health and care in England will be brought forward later this year.

The pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated pressures on our NHS and social care sector. Yet a decade of neglect and underfunding has taken its toll and weakened our health service. Even before the pandemic, waiting lists were up two million and cancer treatment and A&E targets were repeatedly missed. Eleven years of cuts to local government resulted in £8 billion being lost from adult social care budgets, with fewer people receiving publicly funded social care.

I am concerned that the Government’s proposals will do nothing to improve the quality of health and social care. Ministers cannot guarantee that the funding will be enough to clear NHS backlogs, nor can they guarantee that people will not have to sell their homes to pay for social care. It will not help families who are struggling to care for their loved ones, and it won’t do anything for working age people with disabilities.

As part of a wider ambition to make Britain the best country in which to grow old, I support calls for a 10 year plan of investment and reform; a plan to empower care users and their families to live the life they choose by expanding the options between care at home and a care home; a plan to fully join up health and social care services; and a plan that sets out a new deal for frontline care workers to transform pay, training and working conditions and support unpaid carers.

I urge the Government to bring forward a plan that will genuinely fix the crisis in social care and has a fair funding model at its heart. The thousands of families struggling with the system, who only want to do the best for their loved ones, deserve nothing less.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP