John Pugh
Main Page: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)Department Debates - View all John Pugh's debates with the Cabinet Office
(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Lady may ask that question, but millions of people in this country heard her party claim that they were going to end boom and bust and saw her shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), go on a prawn cocktail charm offensive to suck up to the banks which created the problem in the first place. Perhaps she should account for that.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
T8. May I encourage the Deputy Prime Minister to say more about the benefits of the Government’s new social care policy and its advantages for a constituency such as mine in Southport or, to use another random example, Eastleigh?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The benefits of the social care reforms that we announced yesterday are universal. They mean that, for the first time, everybody will have the peace of mind that they will not need to sell their property to deal with the catastrophic costs that can be faced when encountering very high social care costs. We are dramatically increasing, precisely in line with Andrew Dilnot’s recommendations, the means-test threshold so that many more people will be given assistance in the first place. Crucially, if the insurance industry now responds to the incentives built into our proposal to cap the number of costs that can be incurred, we hope that no one will have to make any payments for their social care, because their needs will be covered by insurance policies taken out in the future.