The answer to Nils Pratley’s plaintive question – “Can we not ban hedge funds and private equity firms from owning care homes?” – is a very loud “yes” (Hedge funds and care homes: the unlikeliest of marriages that does no one any favours, 1 May).
We need to place social care (the National Care Service) on an equal footing with the NHS, state-owned and state-provided, both services fully integrated and funded directly by the Treasury (to avoid conflict of budget streams) and funded out of general taxation, with all (including the rich) paying their full, proportionate share into the common pool of shared risk (at the same time eliminating any “cancer/dementia” distinctions). Staff, employed directly, would be properly trained, decently paid, well-treated at work and, importantly, respected and valued alongside the people for whom they care. Sadly, the trend is in exactly the opposite direction – with more and more NHS services being outsourced to private companies, thanks to Andrew Lansley’s pernicious 2012 Health and Social Care Act. We have to press the emergency button and call “all change” before it is too late.
Gillian Dalley
London
• I have some simple suggestions for Damian Green and his so-called social care proposal (Editorial, 30 April). Why not make all those big corporations who trade here but pay taxes elsewhere contribute financially to the country they make money out of? And how about targeting all the heads of companies and billionaires who prefer to avoid paying taxes in favour of stashing the cash in offshore tax havens? Oh, and what about the deleterious outcome of Brexit? Much of social care is performed by EU nationals, on low wages, who have been voting with their feet ever since the referendum.
That’s three positive suggestions, which would fill government coffers and stop the relentless Tory accusations that we over-60s are responsible for all the economic ills that beset the young and the country.
Carol Hedges
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
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