Social Citizenship, Housing Wealth and the Cost of Social Care: Is the Care Act 2014 ‘Fair'?
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12108 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
LEGISLATION
Social Citizenship, Housing Wealth and the Cost of Social
Care: Is the Care Act 2014 ‘Fair’?
Nicholas Hopkins*and Emma Laurie**
This article assesses the extent to which it is ‘fair’ for the government to require owner-occupiers
to draw on the equity accumulated in their home to fund their social care costs. The question is
stimulated by the report of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, Fairer Care Funding
(the Dilnot Commission) and the subsequent Care Act 2014. The enquiry is located within the
framework of social citizenship and the new social contract. It argues that the individualistic,
contractarian approach, exemplified by the Dilnot Commission and reflected in the Act, raises
questions when considered from the perspective of intergenerational fairness. We argue that our
concerns with the Act could be addressed by inculcating an expectation of drawing on housing
wealth to fund older age: a policy of asset-based welfare.
INTRODUCTION
This article assesses the extent to which it is ‘fair’ for the government to require
owner-occupiers to draw on the equity accumulated in their home to fund their
social care costs. This question is stimulated by the report of the Commission on
Funding of Care and Support, Fairer Care Funding (the Dilnot Commission) and
the subsequent Care Act 2014 which enacts its primary recommendations to
place a cap on individual liability for care costs and provide a scheme of Universal
Deferred Payment (UDP). Collectively, these proposals are presented as ‘a new
model of shared responsibility’ which ‘redefines the contract between individuals
and the state’.1They represent a significant rebalancing of the individual-state
relationship in terms of responsibility for funding adult social care, whilst main-
taining the underlying model of funding through both individual and state
contributions. The Dilnot Commission’s overriding objective was to make the
system of funding adult social care fairer as well as sustainable. Fairness is
specifically related to limiting the extent to which an individual is required to
draw on their own wealth, including housing wealth, to pay for the costs of their
care and to ensuring that the home does not have to be sold during the owner’s
*Professor of Law, School of Law, University of Reading.
**Senior Lecturer in Law, Law School, University of Southampton. The paper was presented at
research seminars at both Reading University and the University of Southampton, and at the Asso-
ciation of Law, Property and Society Annual Conference 2014: our thanks to the participants at these
events whose suggestions helped to shape our ideas. We are particularly grateful to John Coggon for
his insights regarding the social contract. We would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for
their useful comments which enabled us to sharpen and clarify our arguments.
1 Commission on Funding of Care and Support, The Report of the Commission on Funding of Care and
Support (July 2011) 21.
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© 2015 The Authors. The Modern Law Review © 2015 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2015) 78(1) MLR 112–139
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
lifetime in order to pay for social care costs. However, the effect of reducing the
contribution that an individual is required to make is to transfer additional costs
to the state.
We first outline the current funding model and provide our analytical frame-
work of social citizenship, the social contract and asset-based welfare. We then
analyse the Commission’s recommendations and their implementation in the
Care Act 2014. We locate our enquiry within the framework of social citizen-
ship and the new social contract. We argue that, by contrast with the collectivist
stance of social citizenship, the social contract takes an individualistic approach to
welfare provision that fails to take into account concerns of intergenerational
fairness. We identify a conceptual link between the social contract and asset-
based welfare through an obligation on the part of individuals to provide for their
own needs. Despite its individualistic focus, we argue that asset-based welfare
nevertheless has the potential to address issues of intergenerational fairness.
However, we suggest that the Care Act 2014 operates to reinforce the expec-
tation of leaving housing wealth as an inheritance which perpetuates inequalities
across generations. Consequently we suggest that, contrary to the Dilnot Com-
mission’s claim, the funding model provided by the Act is neither fair nor
sustainable.
CURRENT FUNDING MODEL
The UK has always adopted a combination of approaches to the funding of
welfare services. Although social care is closely allied to health care, both in its
substance and in the public’s perception, the current funding model is, instead,
aligned with that provided for social security. Health service provision was
founded as a national service in 1948 on the central principles that it should be
available to all according to individual need, financed entirely from taxation and
free at the point of delivery.2The provision of social security is more complex,
however. Its twentieth century origin was based principally on a system of social
insurance which was intended to cover the ‘accidents of life . . . which are quite
inevitable such as the death of a breadwinner or his premature breakdown in
health’.3The attraction for the state of a social insurance model was that it
engendered the traditional virtue of individual responsibility and investment of
personal resources.4As such, we can see that from the outset there was an
expectation on the state’s part of reciprocity. However, the social insurance
scheme was pre-dated by a means-tested pension instigated in 1908. Means-
tested unemployment provision was subsequently adopted ‘for the vast numbers
of unemployed who during the inter-war period had exhausted their right to
insurance benefits’.5This pattern of social insurance covering the major causes of
2 Although prescription charges and dentistry were both initially free, charges were introduced as
early as 1952.
3 Lloyd George quoted in N. Wikeley, A. Ogus and E. Barendt, The Law of Social Security
(Edinburgh: Butterworths, 5th ed, 2002) 3.
4ibid,3.
5ibid,3.
Nicholas Hopkins and Emma Laurie
© 2015 The Authors. The Modern Law Review © 2015 The Modern Law Review Limited. 113(2015) 78(1) MLR 112–139
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