Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what they estimate would be the cost of introducing a cap on social care costs along the lines proposed by the Dilnot report of (1) £35,000, (2) £75,000, or (3) £100,000.

The Government will work to address the challenges of social care for our ageing society to reach a longer-term sustainable settlement for social care. This is why the Government has committed to publishing a Green Paper later this year setting out its proposals for reform.

The Green Paper will bring forward ideas for including an element of risk pooling in the system, which will help to protect people from the unpredictability of care costs. An updated impact assessment and any relevant costings will be provided as part of the Green Paper publication.

Estimates of the cost of introducing a cap on social care costs, along the lines proposed by the 2011 Commission on Funding Care and Support, can be found in an Impact Assessment (IA) previously published by the Department in February 2015. A copy of the Social Care Funding Reform Impact Assessment IA No: 9531 is attached.

It is important to note that the IA does not represent current Government plans, which will be set out following the social care Green Paper consultation, but is the last available published data on the cap.

The IA shows that the cost of a £72,000 cap, together with the means test reforms planned at the time, would be £1.79 billion in 2025/26 (in 2016/17 prices and assuming implementation in April 2016).