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I wrote for the Yorkshire Post about what the Tories have got wrong with their so-called ‘reform’ to social care, and how Labour would fix it.
Under the Prime Minister’s plans, if you own a £1m home, more than 90 per cent of your assets are protected. If you own a home worth £100,000, you could lose almost everything.
That means that a homeowner living somewhere like Grimsby or Halifax would be at risk of losing two thirds of their assets if they needed care. Millions of working people are being asked to pay more tax, not to improve their family’s care, or stop their life savings being wiped out, but to protect the homes of the wealthy.
This working-class dementia tax is unfair, it’s wrong, and will not fix the very real issues facing social care today.
As the Christmas holidays approach, I am very concerned that the Government have failed to learn lessons from the previous years about coronavirus in schools. I spoke on Politics Live yesterday about what needs to be done.
Right now, only 44% of 12-15 year-olds have received a first dose of the vaccine. We have seen almost 300,000 children out of school. And the number of children getting jabbed has dropped 80% since the start of November.
The Government must put in place a ‘Christmas vaccine guarantee’, to make sure all children get their first jab before schools return in January. They also need to take action on ventilation, and make sure children don’t miss out on learning.
I, like many others, was outraged to learn of the party held in Downing Street at the height of lockdown.
Leicester was locked down for over a year. People made huge sacrifices to follow the rules, unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and spending Christmas apart from family and friends.
We now know Downing Street held Christmas parties, which the Prime Minister told the rest of us we couldn’t do. We’ve been lied to and laughed at and it’s a total and utter disgrace.
And this isn’t a one off. We’ve seen Boris Johnson’s adviser travelling to Barnard castle pretending he had a problem with his eyesight and his former Health Secretary breaking lockdown rules to have an affair.
The lies, cover ups and incompetence must end. The Prime Minister and the rest of the Tories are taking the public for fools. They are not fit to hold office.
Analysis by the Labour Party has revealed that by the time Boris Johnson’s cap on care costs comes in, 22,000 people will have run out of money.
The Prime Minister promised over 800 days ago to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all’, but his White Paper doesn’t have a plan to deliver this, let alone actually reform social care.
It won’t stop people from selling their homes to pay for care, and it doesn’t help people who need care right now.
Instead, he’s delivering a tax rise on working people to protect the homes of the wealthy. Thousands of people every year will continue to exhaust all their savings paying for their own care, while thousands more go without the care they need.
This is unfair, it’s wrong, and the Government must think again.
