2019 Election: Labour pledges £10.8 bn for free personal care while Boris Johnson sidelines social care

Labour’s manifesto has promised an end to 15-minute home care visits and is offering a £10.8 billion investment in free personal care for the over 65s, while Conservative leader Boris Johnson has shied away from identifying how he will fix social care.

Labour Party: £10.8bn investment by 2023/24 for free personal care

With the slogan ‘It’s Time For Real Change’, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched the party’s 107-page election manifesto promising to pay for free personal care for over-65s and will invest £10.8billion by 2023/24.

The party says it will give more people basic personal care such as help getting in and out of bed, bathing, going to toilet, getting dressed and meal preparation, with the aim of extending this to all working-age adults later.

Mr Corbyn's manifesto also promised to provide home care workers with paid travel time, access to training and an option to choose regular hours. The party pledges to create a new National Care Service for England and introduce a £100,000 lifetime cap on care costs.

Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto states ‘We will end the social care crisis that has left 1.5 million elderly people without the care they need. Labour will fund free personal care for older people and extra care packages.’

In response, The King’s Fund stated: ‘Free personal care and a cap on personal contributions to care costs won’t solve all the challenges facing social care services, but the policy would represent a significant step towards a fairer system.'

Hugh Alderwick, assistant director of policy at the Health Foundation, warned: Labour's free personal care proposals "don’t include younger disabled adults, who make up around half the cost of the adult social care system."

Labour manifesto promises include:

• Double the number of people receiving publicly-funded care packages including support for autistic people and people with learning disabilities to move out from inappropriate inpatient hospital settings to their homes.

• An end to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments for those with a disability.

• Ensure ‘care is delivered for people, not for profit’ with care provider contracts not awarded to organisations ‘that do not pay their fair share of taxes and do not meet our high standards of quality care’.

• Abolish prescription, basic dentistry and hospital car parking charges.

• Scrap Universal Credit but does not mention what it will replace it with.

• Protect free TV licences for over-75s.

• Invest an extra £1.6 billion a year for mental health services.

• Freeze state pension age at 66 and keep the triple-lock for existing pensioners.

• All workers over the age of 16 to get £10 an hour within the next year with a Real Living Wage.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Boris Johnson may have made a promise on his first day as Prime Minister to “fix social care once and for all” but his party’s 64-page 'Get Brexit Done' manifesto is lighter than most, with more pictures but little answers for social care.

Boris Johnson’s slimline manifesto is perhaps hoping to avoid his predecessor Theresa May’s mistake of including social care proposals like the ‘dementia tax’ which bombed in the 2017 election.

His manifesto reads ‘We will build a cross-party consensus to bring forward an answer that solves the problem, commands the widest possible support and stands the test of time.

'That consensus will consider a range of options but one condition we do make is that nobody needing care should be forced to sell their home to pay for it.’

Health secretary Matt Hancock has promised the Conservatives will work with Labour and other parties to decide on social care reforms. But Jeremy Corbyn has not confirmed he will work with the Conservatives to build a cross-party consensus on social care.

Conservatives: Social care back in the ‘too difficult box'

Boris Johnson has already promised an extra £1bn for social care in England for the year (beginning April 2020), but his manifesto has extended this to every year until 2024/25.

Care experts have said at least £8 billion a year is needed for social care in England to get it back to 2010 funding levels.

In a statement, the social care thinktank The King’s Fund called the Conservative's additional £1 billion 'not enough to meet rising demand for care while maintaining the current quality and accessibility of services'.

‘Despite making a similar pledge to bring forward reform in 2017, social care funding has once again been put back in the too difficult box.

‘Viewing the debate only in terms of older people not having to sell their homes is a disappointingly narrow framing of the problems in social care, and cross-party talks without a concrete proposal are unlikely to deliver meaningful reform.’

Doubling dementia research funding to £160m a year

Boris Johnson has promised to double research funding into dementia by £83m a year to over £160m a year and speed up trials for new treatments.

Ian Wilson, chief executive at Alzheimer's Research UK, welcomed the pledge and said: “Dementia research must be a national priority, whoever forms our next government. We would want to see this investment come into action swiftly to enable further increases to reach the one per cent investment we need by 2025.”

Conservative manifesto pledges include:

• Provide £74 million over three years for extra capacity in community care settings for those with learning disabilities and autism to make it easier for them to be discharged from hospital.

• Ensure free TV licences for over-75s are ‘funded by the BBC’.

• Keeping ‘triple lock’ on state pension - meaning the state pension will rise by CPI measure of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent each year.

• 6,000 more GPs in England by 2024-25 and 50,000 more nurses.

• Currently, over 25s earning the National Living Wage receive £8.21 an hour – the party pledges to increase this to £10.50 an hour over next six years.

Liberal Democrats promise ‘Professional Body of Care Workers’

From a nightclub in Camden, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson launched the party's 96-page manifesto,‘Stop Brexit Build A Brighter Future’ promising to raise the status of caring and create a Professional Body for Care Workers to promote clear career pathways and improved pay structures.

It will also set a target that 70 per cent of care staff should have an NVQ level 2 or equivalent (currently levels are around 50 per cent).

The party plan to raise £7 billion a year over five years by putting 1p on Income Tax - a total of £35 billion - with the money ringfenced for the NHS and social care.

Liberal Democrats pledges include:

• A cap on the costs of care.

• Introduce a independent budget monitoring body for health and care, to report every three years on how much money the system needs to deliver sustainable care.

• Health and Care tax, offset by other tax reductions.

• Free end-of-life social care in the long term.

• Establish a cross-party health and social care convention to agree long-term sustainable funding for social care.

The Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats have all promised to treat mental health with the same urgency as physical health.

The Brexit Party: Social care nursing qualification

The Brexit Party's 22-page 'Contract with the people' manifesto promises to introduce a new nursing qualification in social care and has said it will open access to nursing professions for people without a degree. It will also offer 24-hour GP surgeries.

The Green Party: £4.5bn for free personal care

The Green Party's leader Caroline Lucas is offering £4.5 billion a year to provide free personal care for over-65s.

The party's 92-page 'If Not Now, When?' manifesto also promised to introduce a Universal Basic Income (UBI) , for all to replace Universal Credit. The UBI will be offered at the adult rate (£89 per week) or pensioner rate (£178 per week). Disabled people will receive an extra supplement to their UBI as well as lone pensioners.

The party promises to create community health centres to bring health services closer to people’s homes to help people live healthier lifestyles ‘so that they are less likely to fall ill’.

Plaid Cymru: Free social care at point of need

In Plaid Cymru's 45-page 'Wales, it's Us' manifesto, the party's leader Adam Price is promising free social care at the point of need in a new National Health and Social Care Service - at a cost of an extra £300 million a year.

It pledged 'parity of pay and terms of conditions' for social care workers and health workers.

It also promised to protect 'triple lock' pensions and 'require the BBC to reverse the cuts to free TV licenses'.

SNP to scrap non-residential social care charges

Unlike in England, Scotland already offers free personal care, under the Scottish National Party (SNP), with people aged 65+ entitled to help with personal hygiene, continence, diet, mobility, counselling and other services – in their own homes, if their needs are deemed eligible.

The SNP's leader Nicola Sturgeon published a 52-page 'Stronger Scotland' manifesto promising to protect 'triple lock' pensions. She also pledged to scrap non-residential social care charges, if re-elected as First Minister.

Since 1998, there have been 12 social care green papers, white papers, consultation exercises and five independent reviews. With manifesto pledges published for 12 December's general election, those reliant on social care only hope the new year will not bring with it more broken resolutions.