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Care Industry Reacts To LGA Call For Increased Taxation To Support Social Care

LGA Local Government Association LogoFollowing a call by the Local government Association (LGA) for an increase in income tax or National Insurance to secure the long-term future of adult social care, industry bodies have reacted positively:

Commenting on the implications from the LGA’s consultation process VODG chief executive Dr Rhidian Hughes said:

“The evidence for significant and sustainable reform of adult social care is overwhelming and today’s report from the LGA is a welcome contribution. We need central government leaders to work together, cross-party, to give the millions of older and disabled people who rely on essential services certainty about the care and support they are entitled to receive.”

Rhidian Hughes goes on:

“It is time now for central government to act. The often talked of, but never seen, green paper, should be brought forward without further delay.”

Sally Copley, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “The LGA paints an unhappy but unsurprising picture. People with dementia are the biggest users of adult social care services, and our Helpline is inundated with calls from families at the mercy of this crumbling system.

“Someone in the UK develops dementia every three minutes, and it’s impossible to tell which of us will need costly support in future. While the Government must properly fund the system, we can also chip in for social care as we do for the NHS – either via a new approach to taxation or some other way of pooling risk across society, to end the injustice in the current system that leaves people with dementia facing financial ruin or going without.

“Successive Governments have shirked the issue but I urge Matt Hancock to put forward brave proposals in the forthcoming Green Paper that address the issues raised by our Fix Dementia Care campaign, and commit to the sustainable social care funding that people with dementia have already waited too long for.”

George McNamara, Director of Policy and Influencing at Independent Age, the older people’s charity, said:

“It is a travesty that social care has been neglected by politicians for so long, forcing it to the brink of collapse. Our research on the future funding of care found that not only would increasing National Insurance or Income Tax bring in over £5.5 billion, but that the public support it. This would make providing free personal care for all older people a real possibility. The Government must take the bull by the horns and give social care the money needed to end the crisis in care and ensure older people thrive, not just survive.”

 

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