(Liberal Democratic Party leader Nick) Clegg Retreats on 'Free For All' Care of Elderly

By David Hencke, The Guardian

United Kingdom

January 23, 2008

The Liberal Democrats yesterday promised £2 billion a year towards care for England's ageing population, but admitted this could not fund Scottish-style free care for all. Nick Clegg, the party leader, was outlining plans for a "people's health service" to include elected health bosses and a new patients' contract.

The proposals, to be put to the party's spring conference in March and aiming to stop elderly people having to sell the family home, would have the state matching £1 for £1 the cost of care, with the poorest getting all fees paid through benefit - splitting the care bill two-thirds to the government and one-third to patients.

Clegg said: "We are the first party with serious plans to end the punishing poverty which afflicts the many elderly people forced to pay for their personal care entirely out of their own pockets."

But junior health minister Ivan Lewis, responsible for care services, said: "These proposals are uncosted so the guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on. We don't know who will get what and frankly this amounts to a retreat and U-turn by Mr Clegg on previous Liberal Democrat policy which said that elderly people would get free care regardless of income."

Age Concern's director-general, Gordon Lishman, said the Lib Dem plans represented "an important contribution to the debate about how to remedy the scandalous failure of the current social care system in England".

The King's Fund chief executive, Niall Dickson, said that a sharing of costs between individuals and the state "does appear a sensible way to provide an affordable and sustainable way of providing good social care for all".

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