'Clunking Gordon' defends care plans
Updated on 19 November 2009
The Prime Minister has been forced onto the defensive as the Conservatives attack the government's plans to reform social care.
Gordon Brown is hailing planned changes in care for the elderly as "a major breakthrough" as critics attack a key bill just 24 hours after it was set out in the Queen's speech.
The Personal Care at Home Bill is designed to calm growing concern that pensioners are being forced to spend all their savings to pay for care homes.
It was presented by the Prime Minister as a step towards his long-term ambition of establishing a National Care Service to match the National Health Service.
But Lord Lipsey has said the £670 million plans to guarantee free care to 280,000 elderly and disabled people amounted to "a demolition job on the national budget".
Channel 4 News political correspondent Cathy Newman said: "Lord Lipsey, who was on the royal commission on long-term care has accused Gordon Brown of being 'an admiral firing an Exocet into his own flagship' because he says these plans are half-baked, they've not been properly thought through.
"I've also just come off the phone from Lord Warner who was a Labour health minister. He accused 'clunking Gordon' of railroading Andy Burnham, the health secretary, into producing these plans before he's ready.
"It is rather embarrassing, but separately the Tories have also said that the longer term ambition of setting up a national care services that the government set out, would mean cuts in disability benefit.
"Now there is a real row going on, and it reminds you that we're six months off a general election. The Tories say that these cuts will happen; the government says nothing's settled yet and an aid to Andy Burnham said this is 'shameful scaremongering and politics of the gutter'."
The legislation has been broadly welcomed by campaigners including the Parkinson's Disease Society, Help the Aged and Age Concern.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has refused to rule out further tax rises. Speaking on ITV's This Morning, he said: "The top rate of tax is going up for people earning above £150,000 a year, and I think people would think that was fair.
"I think the pension tax reliefs have been very generous to people who have been very rich. People I think agree that we've got to do something about that. National Insurance itself is going up by half a per cent in 2011.
"Our deficit reduction plan is based on taking action, if we've got to take more action we'll tell people."
Cathy Newman says Mr Brown "clearly left the door open".
"The government's got to, in some way, keep its promise to halve the £175bn deficit by 2014. Tax rises are an obvious way to pay for that.
"Lord Mandelson, the First Secretary, has also said it is obvious that there will be changes to tax and spending, and that more details will be set out in the pre-budget report and also after the election."
