Social Care and the Role of Carers

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords:

“I have heard members of political parties on both the left and the right describe this as an incredibly difficult problem, and my response is that it is not a terribly difficult problem.”


Those are the words of Sir Andrew Dilnot in giving evidence to the Economic Affairs Committee two years ago during its inquiry into social care funding. Although I am a current member of the committee, the excellent report resulting from this inquiry predates my membership.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer told the committee a year ago that one of the reasons for the lack of progress in delivering on the Prime Minister’s promise on his first day in office was the “absence of consensus” over funding. Yet, as Harry Quilter-Pinner of the IPPR told the committee, there is

“a consensus growing behind free personal care”.

The IPPR, the Social Market Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Policy Exchange think tanks, spanning the full range of philosophical and policy approaches, were united in their support for this. With the cancellation this week of the advertised summit between the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, I suggest to your Lordships that the lack of consensus on funding is within the dysfunctional Government and between government departments more than across the political and ideological spectrum.

In focusing on funding, I do not wish to miss the opportunity to pay tribute, as has every speaker this afternoon, to the extraordinary commitment, skill and kindness of individual carers, both professional and unpaid. The urgent need to improve the terms of employment of the professionals and increase the support for the unpaid is precisely why the funding problem must be solved—and solved without further delay.

I shall finish, therefore, by reiterating the recommendations of the committee and the policy of the Labour Party that this urgent need should be wholly or substantially funded from general taxation. I quote Sir Andrew Dilnot’s evidence again:

“One way of describing the current system is that it is a very high inheritance tax, but only on people who have high social care needs.”


The fundamental unfairness of the current system is hard to address through trying to modify the established model, and hypothecated taxes and insurance schemes—such as the one advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—exacerbate the challenge of gaining both political and popular acceptance. I have argued to your Lordships in a broader economic context that a radical overhaul of inheritance tax, creating progressive taxation of both inter vivos gifts and inheritance with complex loopholes and allowances eliminated, is an obvious opportunity to increase revenue to the Exchequer. Does the Minister not agree that this would be a compelling challenge to the Treasury’s refusal to loosen its purse strings to address this national scandal?