I have given way to the hon. Lady already in this debate, as I did in the debate on the previous group of amendments, so I shall make a little progress. She knows that I am always tempted to give way, but I do want to make some progress.
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If we did not make the change I have described, the situation that I outlined before I took the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) is exactly what would happen. If a less well-off person living in Hertfordshire or Hackney had more of their care paid for by their local council than somebody making exactly the same contribution towards their care in Hartlepool, the person from Hertfordshire or Hackney would hit the cap first, and more swiftly. As a Government, we are committed to levelling up, but it does need to be fair. We should not treat less well-off people in different parts of the country differently; rather, we should make sure that they benefit to the same extent and that support for levelling up comes because more people in less well-off regions will benefit than in better-off regions.
I wish to tackle head-on the idea that the cap on care costs is somehow a target that everybody should want to hit. That is absolutely not the case. Nobody should want to hit the cap, which is not a target designed to be hit: it is a backstop protection for people. The nature of the means-tested support will dramatically reduce the amount that less well-off users will have to spend on care. For example, wealthier people who entirely self-fund their own residential care are likely to have to spend £86,000 of their own money if they live in a residential home for just over three years. Older adults have around a one-in-three chance of living in a residential home for that long once they have entered it. Somebody who starts with £100,000 of assets would need to draw on care and support in a residential home for about 10 years to have to spend the same amount. They have just a one in 50 likelihood of that being the case. Somebody who starts with even lower assets is even less likely to spend that much of their own money. The reforms are therefore fair, because they mean it will be far less likely that less well-off people will face very high costs.
We believe that the approach I have set out is fair and is a significant improvement on the situation today, so we must insist that the House disagrees with Lords amendment 80 and the clause is reinserted.