Social care must be funded – your generation will need it next

How much tax do you really, deep down, want to pay, asks Hamish McRae

Do the government’s plans for funding social care make sense? (PA)

So there is a plan, or rather two plans: one for funding social care, the other for public spending more generally. Do they make sense?

Let’s start with social care. We will have to wait and see whether this rise in national insurance contributions is the most politically acceptable way of stopping people having to sell their homes when they need to be looked after in old age. We will also have to wait and see whether this new levy will be enough, or whether some future government will come back and call for another increase. Anyone with a long memory may recall that Gordon Brown added 1p on national insurance to fund the NHS in his budget of April 2002. It was billed as the biggest ever increase in NHS funding, and was not nearly enough, as we now know.

But at least the problem, and this government’s solution to it, is out in the open. That’s a start.