Summary: Theresa May wants to be seen as a leader, strong and stable and resolute in dealing with the EU. Her extraordinary U-turn on the “Dementia Tax” and other things gives the lie to that. The awful terrorist attack in Manchester has now shone a spotlight on the fact that as Home Secretary she cut police numbers by nearly 20,000. Police chiefs have said for some time that these cuts are substantially compromising security.

Theresa May is now been revealed in her true colours. The Economist newspaper now calls her “Theresa Maybe”. Not strong and stable and safe in her hands at all. Rather she has proved to be weak and unstable. She has also managed to make our country significantly less safe by cutting police numbers substantially while she was in the Home Office.

Her extraordinary U-turn on her social care policy and the “Dementia Tax” was understandable, given the negativity in the press. However this was compounded by her flat refusal to admit there had been any change. Indeed “the change” in policy she announced has been very ambiguous, only an undertaking to look at it again but it is clear that there is actually no commitment at all for any change. It’s not the first time she has done a U-turn on a major political issue.

The Tory abandonment of the national insurance increase for self-employed, the failure to take 3000 unaccompanied refugee children agreed by the government and only take 350 (and then under great pressure) was disgraceful. Despite considerable opposition from within her own party at as well as from outside she continues to stick with the preposterous policy of reducing net immigration to under 100,000. Even the most hardline Brexiteers appreciate that this is impossible.

This been relatively little coverage about her policy to affect negatively pensioners, the removal of the winter fuel allowance. For millionaire cabinet members a few hundred pounds here or there probably isn’t very important. If you’re a pensioner it can be a very significant amount of money. Pensioners may have done disproportionately well with the triple lock on pension increases but removing the winter fuel allowance will in practice put them back by several years.

Before the dreadful terrorist attack in Manchester there was considerable concern about police numbers. Police sources had made it clear that the drop of nearly 20,000 in the police compliment while Theresa May was Home Secretary (2010-2016) was having a devastating effect on the capacity of police to carry out the sort of duties the public expected of them.

The government claims that crime has been dropping but those statistics ignore the almost 6 million fraud and cyber-crimes committed in that same period. Soon there will be a realisation that the lack of manpower to help tracking “persons of interest” must undoubtedly contribute to a reduced level of security. Winding the official level up to “critical” doesn’t improve things at all.

Our current Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, when challenged about possible further reductions in police numbers made it clear that savings were being sought and refused to rule out further reductions in police numbers.

For many years, Jeremy Corbyn has understood the toxic link between the way Western powers have intervened in the Middle East and the level of threat from terrorists in that region. For many years it has not been politically correct to even suggest there is a link because so many British lives have been lost because of ill-conceived military actions throughout the area.

The great majority of British people are sick and tired of intervening overseas and trying to change regimes so that we end up with situations as we have in Libya, arguably in a much worse situation and I was under Gaddafi. Jeremy Corbyn’s view that military action is something we must be prepared to take only as a last resort is too often ridiculed by the right-wing media as disguised pacifism.

Jeremy Corbyn has been consistent in his views about this and many other aspects of his politics. Theresa May has actually been in power for many years yet has little to show for it (see: http://outsidethebubble.net/2017/04/24/we-need-to-talk-about-theresa/ ). The way she is now seen as weak, unstable and now very unsafe ought to be understood that this is the way she really is.

Summary: The figures for those needing care under the Tories new policy are much more worrying than first thought. You can only release up to 35% of the current value of your home.  If your home is worth £150,000 then you can raise £50,000 and get under the £100,000 inheritance limit.  However if your house is more valuable, you cannot release enough capital to get under the £100,000 limit. If your house is worth £180,000 say then raising the maximum £60,000 means the part you own is worth £120,000.  This is over the limit. Once you have spent £60,000 on your care the only way to raise the additional money you need for your care is to sell your house, even if you live in it. This makes you homeless! Anyone with a property worth over £150,000 will be essentially forced to sell it if they are to get the care they may well need. 

Teresa May’s Tories want to introduce a method of making everyone pay for their own care should they need it at home until their total assets, including the value of your house is under £100,000.  Imagine you are a pensioner on the state pension with modest savings.  You need care at home.  You can manage pretty well and want to stay in the home you may have lived in for very many years.  It is expensive, typically £16 – £25 per hour in your own home. One hour morning and night works out at £18,000 per annum, which many people simply don’t have.  You want to raise the money the government insists you provide for your own care, so let us imagine the home you live in is worth more than £150,000 which is true for the vast majority of homes occupied by pensioners.  If your home is worth more than that then things are simply worse for you.

With equity release you can raise only about 35% of the value of your home.  This will give you perhaps £50,000 or a bit more.  Your home will then be worth more than the £100,000 inheritance limit the Tories are insisting on. Once you have spent all the money raised by equity release, what can you do?  You must raise more as your assets are still worth more than £100,000.  All you have is your house, the home you live in.  All you can do is sell it, making yourself homeless.

Essentially, the policy that Teresa May proposes is to throw you onto the street within a few short years (could easily be as short as two years) of you first needing care in your own home.

Not very fair, and rather terrifying for an elderly person with no other help available.

Suppose you are stricken with something like dementia, Parkinsons disease, multiple sclerosis, all conditions likely to need many years of care.  The Tory policy virtually guarantees you are made homeless before you are ill enough to justify residential care, itself in very short and shrinking supply.

That is what Britains pensioners are to be rewarded with after a lifetime of hard work, paying their taxes, struggling to buy their own home and contributing in so many ways to making society work.

Simply not fair at all.

Teresa May wants to create a country fair to all.  This dreadful approach to providing care for the elderly will be a massive, unprescedented stealth tax on your hard earned savings.  Deeply unfair in so many ways.

Labour wants to use a different approach, putting a cap on how much anyone has to pay for their own care. Proposed by an independent review, and much fairer to all.

If the Tories win this election this terrible attack on the elderly will be unstoppable.

Theresa May’s new manifesto will force elderly people to pay a larger part of the costs of their care. By including their home in estimating their assets very many of the elderly will be forced to raise money for their care by releasing the equity in their property as soon as they need any care. Only when their total assets fall below £100,000 will the council consider helping. There is no evidence that the government will make up the present shortfall in social care funding so even that threshold is probably not to be taken too seriously.

Theresa May has delivered her manifesto for the next Tory government. One major change is a new long-term plan for elderly care. The elderly have to pay for their own care no matter how much it costs until their asset value falls below £100,000. All their assets such as savings and income are taken into account and now, for the first time, it includes their home. When they die any money still owing has to be paid for by selling their home.

At present that sale is not enforced if the home is occupied by a spouse or dependent relative. The manifesto makes no mention of the possibility of delaying the sale in future if that home is occupied by a spouse or dependent relative.

Very few properties in the UK are worth less than £100,000. Only in the Outer Hebrides does the median home value approach that. The median value in the UK is just under £250,000.

This means that virtually everyone living in owner occupied (but not rented) accommodation will have to fund their own care from the beginning. Typical residential care costs in the UK are in the region of £40,000 per annum while the cost of home care averages around £8000 per annum. There are 426,000 individuals in residential care and the median time that an individual spends in residential care is about 15 months.

Councils are not obliged to pay for social care. It is very much up to them to decide what they will pay for and indeed any additional funds provided by central government may or may not be used for social care. Consequently, only 20% of older people have their care paid for by the council. They are more likely to provide a loan to pay for social care, to be repaid on death by selling the property.

At present if you have less than £23,250 in assets and you are living in your own home the council will be obliged to help you. For someone living on a state pension with little in the way of savings then the would get help at present. However in future you will  have to pay for this yourself by raising money as best you can. Only one in four of us will actually go into residential care, the rest being looked after at home with, if you’re lucky, some local council support.

These changes are likely to force people to use equity release, something that is a pretty stressful operation for most. When done at short notice the yield can be very poor. Only once the residual value of your assets including your property is below £100,000 will you be eligible for help and even then you’re quite likely not to get any. For most elderly people in need of care it simply isn’t practical to downsize to a smaller property. The stress of doing that could well be fatal.

Some will see this as a right and proper way to force people to pay more towards their care by clawing it back from their estates rather than letting them pass it on to future generations. Very few need long-term residential care although that is something that many worry about. The proposed changes undoubtedly will increase greatly the stress that comes with old age and increasing infirmity.

Some will claim that this is essentially the Death Tax proposed by Labour before the 2010 election. However that was part of a move to generate a universal care system for everybody. This is another Tory policy designed to squeeze money out of the elderly and infirm. It is surprising that the Tories want to penalised pensioners who are their most loyal and enthusiastic voters. Increasingly they are being told that in Tory Britain you are simply on your own.

Prime Minister David Cameron answers questions in front of the Liaison Select Committee at the House of Commons, London.

Summary: reports of Parliamentary Committees are very important as they try to hold the government to account. The cross parliamentary nature of these committees and the fact that most of the reports are agreed by the great majority of the committee make them much more balanced and less partisan than so many political interventions. With the decision to hold a snap General Election many of these reports (there have been more than thirty since Parliament broke up) are likely to be ignored. We look at a number of those that are particularly important and should be taken seriously.

Now that the election campaign is underway we are braced for series of misleading announcements and claims. One of the better developments in recent years with our parliamentary system has been the increasing importance of parliamentary committees. These are groups of MPs chosen from across the political spectrum and charged with looking at particular issues of concern. They then produce a report which is agreed by the committee as being relatively fair and balanced.

The reports of these committees therefore are important as they are one of the most effective ways of holding the government to account. With essentially no parliamentary opposition, the government has been inclined to ignore reports it didn’t care for. It is important that we do not lose sight of what the latest batch recommend.

The government would dearly like us to forget all about them. We really must not do that.

Here is a selection taken from the more than thirty published since Parliament broke up:

Food Waste in England: this is a report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The level of food waste in the UK is very high,  running at over £20 billion per year (post-farm-gate). Supermarkets have been a major cause of this waste (the obsession with best before dates rather than use by dates)  and the committee praised Tesco for publishing much more food waste data, and noted that Sainsbury’s is moving in the same general direction. However they expressed concern that other retailers had not followed and that the voluntary approach broadly is not working. They suggest that this should be legislated for and such changes would create much more transparency. They also think it important that schoolchildren are taught about this from an early age. (See: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmenvfru/429/42909.htm#_idTextAnchor060 )

Feeding the Nation: Labour Constraints: there is a widespread concern amongst horticultural and agricultural suppliers about the difficulty in finding labour. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee expressed great concern that Brexit could make the current bad situation very much worse. They mentioned specifically that the reality of what is already happening on farms around the country is utterly different from the impressions given by the government which appear to be largely ignorant of the current needs of agriculture and certainly of its future needs. Their report is here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmenvfru/1009/100907.htm .

Access to General Practice: this is a report of the Public Accounts Committee looking at the problems with GP access and the consequences for the NHS more widely. Although the government had vowed in 2015 to increase the number of GPs by 5000 over the next five years, the numbers actually fell over the last year. They also noted that patients registered with practices that had shorter core hours opening times (those between 8:00am to 6:30pm) attend A&E departments more often than on average. This report is here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpubacc/892/89205.htm#_idTextAnchor007

Integrating Health and Social Care: another report from the Public Accounts Committee, this time looking at the Better Care Fund that was intended to provide more funding for social care is described in the report as being “little more than a ruse” to simply transfer money out of the NHS into the social care budget. They find it is simply a highly bureaucratic initiative to disguise the way that local council budgets have been cut. This report may be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpubacc/959/95902.htm

NHS Ambulance Services: another report from the Public Accounts Committee (yes, they have been busy) examined reports that emergency patients are taking far too long to get to hospital by ambulance. There is a target to get patients to the emergency department within 15 minutes. In 2010-11 80% of transfers met that target whereas in 2015-16 that number had dropped to only 58%. The Committee found that the ambulance services had great difficulty in finding labour and that the high sickness absence rates experienced by ambulance services caused by the badly overworked way they are currently operating in is exacerbating these problems. This report can be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpubacc/1035/103505.htm#_idTextAnchor004 .

Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015: Headline Ambitions for the Army. Outsidethebubble.net has posted articles dealing with the desperate problems of the current MoD procurement programme and the remarkable unreliability of so much of the equipment we depend on for our defence (see: http://outsidethebubble.net/2017/03/16/britain-defenceless-in-the-21st-century/ and http://outsidethebubble.net/2017/04/10/defence-in-the-21st-century/). Now the Defence Committee has expressed its concern about the lack of trained soldiers in the Regular Army. In 2012 the target was lowered from 95,000 to 82,000, but it currently remains stubbornly below 80,000. It expresses considerable concern about the inability of our Army to cope with any significant external aggression. They also expressed concern that the Review has added nearly £25 billion of new commitments to cover an, as yet uncosted, programme for the new Mechanised Infantry Vehicle. This leads to considerable budgetary uncertainties for the future. This report can be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmdfence/108/10810.htm#_idTextAnchor082 .

Housing: State of the Nation: the Public Accounts Committee is particularly concerned about the remarkable complacency and lack of urgency in dealing with the matter of homelessness. the Department for Communities and Local Government plan to build a million houses over the next five years but more than 1.4 million are actually required. This is a matter which has also been dealt with on outsidethebubble.net (see: http://outsidethebubble.net/2016/09/27/a-fairer-deal-solving-the-housing-crisis/ ). This report may be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpubacc/958/95802.htm.

The Structure of the Homebuilding Industry: there is another housing report from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. In particular, they have been looking at the skills shortage that will be needed to produce a real leap in the supply of housing. They are concerned here about the serious shortage of labour and in particular the supply of labour from the European Union. Already the workforce are beginning to be nervous about the future they might have after Brexit leading to major challenges in finding a big enough labour force to even begin to address the housing crisis. Their report can be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmcomloc/46/4611.htm#_idTextAnchor084

Citizens Income: a report from the Work and Pensions Committee is particularly negative about calls for a Citizens Income. The report suggests it is little more than a distraction from serious reform of the welfare system and advises the government not to expend any energy on it. The report may be found here: https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmworpen/793/79303.htm#_idTextAnchor003