Letter: We are already paying for social care

Adult social care facilities will be reviewed by Northampton borough councillors

Social care for the elderly, and proposals on how we should go about funding it, is back in the news again.

It is less than 18 months or so since Theresa May’s so-called “Dementia Tax” put a massive dent in her lead in the polls.

Her proposals went down so well in her attempt at a power grab in the 2017 General Election, that she lost her majority, instead of gaining the 60 or so seats that she thought she would.

We already do have such a tax, and have been for several years now, paying a surcharge of up to three per cent on our annual council tax bills to fund social care for the elderly.

The latest ruse from the Government, to get us out of a hole that they have put us in, by cutting over £2bn annually on social care for the elderly, is to tax all of us that are over 40 by an additional 2.5 per cent on top of the standard rates of 20 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

This money would then go into a pot to fund your social care in the home should you become reliant upon it in the twilight of your life.

But what happens to the money if you get to live to a ripe old age, but pass on never requiring social care in the home?

Are the Government going to give all this money back to your family or dependants in the form of a rebate? Of course they won’t.

According to one of your correspondents in The Telegraph recently, over £120bn in tax goes uncollected each year in the UK.

The vast majority of it from massive overseas conglomerates who somehow manage to get out of paying the full amount of Corporation Tax of 20 per cent on any and all profits that they make in the UK.

Put simply, almost the entire annul budget needed to fund the NHS is kept out of the reach of the taxman.

I almost did what for me was the unthinkable in 2017, and voted Conservative.

I didn’t, because of the “Dementia Tax”.

If yet another tax is put upon us to fund social care for the elderly, when this Government does all that it can to help facilitate tax avoidance amongst the big corporations in this country, voting Conservative is something that I will never ever contemplate doing so again in my life time.

And with a Labour Party in disarray, and completely unelectable, where does that leave us?

Ivan Humphrey, Kettering