How to pay for social care

I watched The Politics Show last Sunday and I was particularly interested in the debate on funding for elderly care. The Conservative spokesperson had pulled out of the talks because Labour were not ruling out a new tax to fund care. I am not sure where this leaves the debate. If the objective is to stop headlines about pensioners selling houses to pay for care then payment has to come from somewhere else.

The easiest answer is to raise a new tax. If this is not acceptable because of a fundamental philosophy (which wasn't there the previous week) then huge savings, because it is an expensive business, have to be made elsewhere. The whole debate changes from how do we go about supplying social care to what is less important than social care and this is a huge debate which should not be confined to three MPs who speak out on social care.

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