Labour should back tax relief for ‘granny annexes’, suggests Parmjit Dhanda
The lack of political consensus on how the UK faces up to, let alone tackles, our national care crisis is something we should all be worried about.
Labour made some proposals far too close to the end of the last parliament – which the Tories opportunistically used as a political football. You may recall they coined the phrase ‘Labour’s Death Tax’ to attack a proposal to tax people’s estates when they die.
The recent commission led by Andrew Dilnot put forward some excellent ideas, but it will also struggle to find political consensus. The Tories are talking about putting back any implementation of Dilnot to 2025. In the meantime our population grows older, specialist housing associations have lost the grants they needed to build housing schemes for the elderly, local councils’ abilitity to cope with care home fees have been hit by a 30 per cent cut to their budgets, and care services for the elderly are showing real signs of strain across the country.
Labour needs to think through its offer right across our public services. It could do worse than test new policies against some core principles. First, in the face of a debt mountain new policies have to deliver value for money. Second, if the party is to return to power policy needs to have direct appeal to aspirational voters in marginal seats that left us in droves at the last election and, frankly, these people have not returned. And third, we need to take on David Cameron’s big idea of the ‘big society’ – not by belittling it but by outflanking it.
One of the best examples of the ‘big society’ I can think of is the selfless contribution made by the carers of elderly relatives. But what does government do to back them? We applaud those cultures where caring as part of the extended family comes naturally, but we do not – through policy – create an environment which fosters it.
The Labour party should support tax relief or direct grants to people who need to build developments, annexes and extensions to their homes to look after elderly relatives. In doing so we would be supporting a more caring culture. We would appeal to the aspirational human instinct too, by allowing people to benefit from the uplift of the value of their enhanced home.
Making it more financially viable for people to build granny annexes is not going to be the cure to our care crisis. But in all of its new policies Labour needs to be clear about the kind of society it wishes to create. It must demonstrate that we are on the side of people who save the state money, and to be credible at all it must make the case for policies that can reduce the size of our debt. We must make clear that it is we who understand that as our society grows older new approaches are required, and a new attitude established towards supporting the families of elderly relatives.
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Parmjit Dhanda is a former minister and a board member of Hanover, a provider of housing for older people
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This sort of proposal, if properly developed, could make a substantial contribution to solving both the UK’s housing problem and its care of the elderly problem.
There are, of course, several issues to be addressed, like…Do the British actually want to care for their own parents? Or do they just want their inheritance asap? Will HM Treasury be capable of taking a broader approach to tax gathering? and so on.
There was a piece in Progressonline by “Old Politics”, posted on 29 June 2011, entitled “Britain’s housing crisis is a set of linked crises”, which I commented on at some length, outlining some of what I thought to be the main issues. My comments refered to the concept, not well developed in Britain, of the “family home” (Item 5).
I have had difficulty in finding this item on the Progress website, but it comes up, on the second page, if anyone googles my name.
I hope this comment and reference are helpful.
Anthony Sperryn