My Lords, I understand the concerns about the lack of debate in the other place on this issue. The Government are putting in place a package of reforms to be implemented in 2023. The introduction of the £86,000 cap on costs is part of a package through which we hope that no one will lose out when compared to the current system. I will get the source that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked me for. I think that is a reasonable question.
The Government believe that having the cap in place allows people to balance their personal responsibility of planning for later years and puts in place a system where we hope that no one faces unpredictable care costs. Without Clause 140, two people with the same level of wealth, contributing the same amount towards the cost of their care, could reach the cap at very different times, driven not by how much they are spending on their care but how much the local authority is. We wanted to address that perceived unfairness.
Instead, the Government made the decision to offer the same cap for everyone. However, the cost for people with more modest means will be reduced in two important ways: first, through means-tested support, including for those living in their home. This kicks in as soon as someone’s assets fall below £100,000, potentially right from the start of their care journey. We chose to
offer the same threshold for means-tested support, no matter where somebody draws on care, because we want to support and encourage people to be able to stay in their own homes whenever they can. That was an ambition set out in our White Paper, People at the Heart of Care.
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Secondly, lower daily living costs will ensure that, having reached the cap, more people will be able to afford daily living costs from their income, protecting their assets, which is a key objective of the cap. Clause 140 as amended would make sure that no person was worse off through our reforms, but I understand the concerns from noble Lords across the Committee who say that that is not enough. The amendments would allow those care costs incurred by an individual to meter towards the cap. The person would then be able to meter at the rate that the local authority would have paid to meet those needs.
We hope that these changes will provide parity and fairness between self-funders and those funded by local authorities when there is a delay in carrying out a needs assessment. Decoupling how a local authority decides what meters towards the cap from the personal budget and independent personal budgets will simplify processes. This, we hope, would provide more autonomy and personalisation to the care user, rather than being a record of how much a person’s care costs.
We believe that these amendments are necessary to ensure parity between self-funders and people supported by a local authority to pay for their care, as well as to ensure that all amounts which ought to meter towards the cap will do so. However, given our discussions with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, earlier today and given the views expressed by noble Lords, in the spirit of what I hope will be ongoing constructive discussions, I will not press these amendments at this stage and bring the matter back on Report.
I shall briefly touch on some of the other amendments. Amendments 233 and 234 work in conjunction to require the Secretary of State to specify in regulations that people entering care under 40 will not face personal care costs in their lifetime. There have been previous iterations of the policy, including different caps for different ages, but we did not feature them because they were considered unfair. For example, someone entering care the day before their 40th birthday would benefit from a personal care cost cap of zero and free personal care for their lifetime, but a person entering care after their 40th birthday would not benefit from the same free personal care by a two-day margin. We considered that a cliff edge of that magnitude would be unfair. I have also heard—