Head of NHS says older 'advantaged' homeowners should foot social care bill

NHS England boss Simon Stevens has said adult social care funding should come from pensioners with “accumulative housing wealth” rather than from the younger, working age generations, who don’t have the same level of home ownership as “parents and grandparents”.

These comments were made after Health and Social Care Minister, Jeremy Hunt, stated last month that there would be a cap on the cost of social care; although the Spring Statement didn’t really address social care as was originally mooted by Government.

Mr Steven’s comments were issued during an inquiry by the Commons’ Housing, Communities and Local Government and Health and Social Care committees, on how adult social care services were to be financed in the future.

The care chief said in Parliament: “We can’t avoid the fact that whether we like it or not the founding deal for the NHS and the founding deal for the social care system has been different.

“And when we look at the question of whether working age adults should see their taxes go up in an unbalanced way relative to the accumulative housing assets of our parent’s generation, that would be a difficult argument to win.”

Answering questions by the two select committees, Mr Stevens said that he estimated an extra £1 billion per year was needed for social care, but he suggested that this ‘modest’ amount would need to come from those who have already got the resources “to form part of the funding answer.”

Mr Stevens told the committee that the current adult care system was “unfair and hard to navigate” and was not seen as ‘satisfactory’ by the general public. He also spoke of ‘regional variations” in adult care - similar to those that occur within the NHS.

The NHS head added that social care for young adults had seen recent improvements, with the biggest remaining issue still being the care of “frail, elderly people”.

‘Bed blocking’ was cited as the biggest pressure faced by both the NHS and social care, and the care chief referred to last night’s episode of BBC Two’s “Hospital” programme, which he said was a realistic portrayal of the issues around bed-blocking for both the NHS and social care.

Mr Stevens quoted figures that stated that currently 18,000 hospital beds are now being unnecessarily filled because of “difficulties [of patients] getting discharged and social care support that people need. He went on to say: “That is the equivalent of having 36 of our acute hospitals out of action.”