Political Opinion: Offering people greater security in later life

Monthly column by Alex Mayer, MP for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard

What happens if you, or a family member, need care in later life? It’s a question very many people ask.

Currently, it’s a lottery of life. Many families can face eye-watering bills, selling a home to fund care; older people can find themselves worrying about how they will pay for the help they need; and too often relatives are left trying to navigate a complicated system at an already difficult time.

Meanwhile the pressure on social care has increasingly spilled over into the NHS.

I don’t think that is good enough.

We should be able to offer people greater security in later life – both a decent State Pension and the reassurance that if they need personal care, it will be there.

That is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to establish a National Care Service. It will provide people with free personal care, available at the point of use. It will be founded on the same basic principle as the NHS: everyone contributes and everyone is covered.

That means people would no longer be charged for the personal care they need with everyday essentials such as washing, dressing and eating. It would give people and their families something that is currently missing from our care system: peace of mind.

The NHS took time to build. So too will the National Care Service. Plans are being made now on exactly how and when it should be introduced and expanded.

The triple lock will change to pay for this new free service. So what’s the plan?

Firstly, everything stays the same until 2030. After 2030 the State Pension will still be guaranteed to go up every April.

It will always rise by 2.5%, unless CPI inflation is higher. So if inflation is 3% it would go up by 3% (i.e. to keep up with prices in the shops).

Pensioners will also continue to benefit from increases reflecting average earnings, with these being measured over a longer period rather than depending on the earnings figure in one particular year.

Taken together, I believe this is a new and better settlement for older people (and the country as a whole).

A care service that works with free personal care if you need it alongside a state pension that always rises.