Social Care Crisis: North East carers 'sceptical' NI rise will be enough

A Northumberland nurse, who cares for her mother in Morpeth, has told ITV News Tyne Tees she may have to sell her house to pay for care home costs.

Responding to news the government will raise National Insurance payments for working aged people by 1.25 per cent, Kerry Cafferty said she does not know how she can afford to pay the £980 weekly bill for her mum to be in a care home.

Her mother, Patricia, has vascular dementia and Alzheimer's.

Kerry Cafferty said: "I’ve just had to drop a days work. One day a week as a nurse, so I’m losing £480 a month just so I can be at home for her so she hasn’t got lots of different carers coming in so she’s got the continuity. So that’s massive, to take £480 out of my wage and then on top of that having to find £400 a week for her to go into respite even, its just not manageable.

"The care home that I’ve looked at, where she’s going in for respite, is between £887 and £980 a week. [I'll] probably sell the house, I don’t know, I don’t know what to do."

The government's plans, funded by the £1.25 per cent National Insurance rise will raise around £36 billion over three years. The majority of this money will go to the NHS Covid recovery, but the social care sector will receive around £5.3 billion a year.

The plans mean there will be a cap of £86,000 on how much people will pay for care in their lifetime. People with assets worth less than £20,000 will not pay towards care at all.

Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group, said: "I welcome the fact that social care has been in the spotlight today, but I’m disappointed, yet again, the amount of money going into the social care sector is dwarfed by the amount of money going into the NHS, because I thought this was the spotlight for social care really.

"It should not have been National Insurance, because it is a regressive tax, it affects the younger and those in employment more, and I think and employers of course, I think it should have gone onto income tax, spread across the whole population, like the NHS. Everybody benefits. Everybody pays."

The PM told the Commons: "From next April, we will create a new UK-wide 1.25% health and social care levy on earned income hypothecated in law to health and social care with dividend rates increasing by the same amount. "

He acknowledged the new health and social care levy breached a Tory election commitment but told MPs "a global pandemic was in no-one's manifesto".

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer attacked the prime minister's plan, not just for the way it will be funded, but for lacking detail on how it will improve the system.