Group opposes funding elderly care

Providing free personal care for older people through taxation could cost the equivalent of another NHS and should be ruled out, the Policy Exchange think tank has claimed.

A report by the group, entitled The Careless: Funding long-term care for the elderly, said that providing the care through general taxes will cost as much as £106 billion a year.

The think tank is urging the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support to dismiss general taxation as a way of funding the provision.

It is recommending three other funding methods: the King's Fund partnership; social insurance; and a hybrid model in which people have to find their own money to "top up" what the state does not pay for.

Policy Exchange's Henry Featherstone, who wrote the report, said: "We now have an opportunity, and the time, to properly think through and implement a fundamental reform of the way that we pay for long-term care of the elderly, to make the system clearer and fairer and be able to meet the future demands of an ageing population."

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