Polly Toynbee points to the dilemma facing politicians over paying for social care (The social care crisis drags on, thanks to May’s cowardice, 22 May). The legitimate human desire to pass on one’s hard-earned wealth – in the vast majority of cases one’s house – to the next generation clashes with the legitimate need for the state to draw on that wealth to pay for social care.
The case often put by my Leeds constituents was “We’ve paid for our house so why should we not be entitled to pass it on to our son or daughter.” The huge flaw in this argument is that the current value of the house to be passed on is way above what the person paid for it decades before, even including the addition of general inflation.
My Leeds house today is valued at twice what I paid for it, plus inflation, 37 years ago. Why not, therefore, accept the argument but limit the capital sum thus safeguarded to the current value of what the individual actually paid, with the additional sum then available to pay for social care? It would not be too difficult to produce an actual or assessed valuation, where necessary with an assumed date, and then the amount available to the state would be known. This would square the circle of the emotional inheritance argument and the need to pay for social care.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• Polly Toynbee perpetuates a myth in saying that Scotland provides free universal care for the elderly – this is simply not true! A “personal care” fee is deducted from the weekly bill which is more generous than provision in England, but it makes up a tiny proportion of the weekly charge. My mother, in a local authority care home six years ago, was billed £938.50 weekly minus the free personal care fee of £23.50. We were preparing her house to be sold in order to continue paying these charges when she sadly died.
Maureen Kinsey
Leeds
• The one stumbling block to free social care may well be the fact that so much of care is provided by private companies. In the present circumstances a state-funded free service will be underwriting a for-profit system. We need a National Care Service to ensure value – for the state’s money – and a conformity of standards across the country.
Dave Verguson
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
• Polly Toynbee writes that £1.5bn will be needed by 2021 even just to keep up with the current cost of the miserable level of social care for the elderly. The National Audit Office reckons that £2.9bn will be needed to fill the “black hole” in the Trident renewal programme (Spending watchdog finds hole in Trident budget, 22 May). Guess which sum will be found without the tiniest squeak of controversy.
Caroline Westgate
Hexham, Northumberland
• Polly Toynbee’s article covers the crisis in the residential sector but surely we should see it as only the end of the road. Community (and domiciliary) care need as much attention. Since local authorities have had their resources pared to the bone, the private and voluntary sectors have tried to fill the gap. I visit people in residential care and I am not impressed by what’s available. The insert in the same day’s Guardian on dementia doesn’t stress enough the importance of getting local authorities involved. The emphasis should be on developing community services that are “friendly” for the elderly and disabled as well as those people with dementia.
Richard Ehlers
Downham Market, Norfolk
• In the supplement on dementia, Jeremy Hughes, CEO of the Alzheimers Society, urges us to work together to support both carers and those with dementia but skirts around the central issue in his second paragraph. Until we recognise that dementia is like any other disease, with the exception that there is no known treatment or cure and is indeed a terminal condition requiring devoted care on a massive scale, it will not get the support and recognition it deserves and which cancer already receives on a commendable scale.
Terry Pratchett, David Baddiel, the Alzheimers Society and many others have done wonders in drawing the government’s and the nation’s attention to the problem and in making us aware that we are all potential victims. To take the required action has serious cost implications and is dependant on taxation policies. Don’t expect much sympathy from the smooth-talking Jeremy Hunt, but surely the prime minister understands that it is vital to address this problem in the short term if she is to deliver the caring society that she set out in her initial policy statement. It is scandalous and indefensible that in this rich society we are as yet unable even to deal with the social care crisis, let alone do the decent thing with regard to dementia.
Peter Swift
Winchester
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