UKIP Event Election 2017

I want to talk about controversial area of this election, which is

protecting older people. The Conservative plan to confiscate

assets pound for pound from elderly people to pay for their social care,

is the worst and stupid public policy proposal of recent years. And

the nastiest too. It cannot be allowed to be implemented in its

current form. The Prime Minister is effectively proposing a 100%

inheritance tax, on assets over ?100,000, for those unlucky enough

to develop a debilitating long-term condition, that requires domiciliary

care, such as dementia or acute arthritis for instance. Every pound

spent on care for these unfortunate people will be claimed back from

either at the time they receive it, or from their estate when they die.

Now most policies that intrude on personal finances concern tens of

pounds, such as insurance tax rises for instance on hundreds of pounds

at most. Such as Ukip's excellent proposals to cut the cost of living,

saving house holes ?4400 a year, by taking taxes off domestic energy. --

?400 a year. This Tory death tax is in another league. It could involve

taking tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds, out

of someone's estate. If they have been unlucky enough to suffer an

extended debilitating condition late in life. Damian Green seems to feel

he is qualified to tell people how much is reasonable for them to pass

on to their children. But the financial exposure the Tories are

leaving millions of elderly people is not reasonable at all.

In fact, this is a Russian roulette approach to paying for social care,

and the investigation of Government responsibility, it makes a mum

mockery of the claims of Mrs May and her key advisers to be running a

communetarian Conservative administration.

Just consider for a moment typical house prices in parts of the

country, particular but not exclusively in southern England. In

Dagenham for example average house prices are ?295,000. In Thurrock

338,000. In Ramsgate 210,000. In Epping more than 500,000. Homeowners

requiring domiciliary social care are typically people who have paid

off their mortgages, and therefore own all or nearly all of the value

of their house. So, in these ordinary English towns I have

listed, anything from 110,000 to 400,00 pounds will be exposed to the

Tory death tax. The Prime Minister seems to wish to avoid scrutiny on

heavyweight political programmes in this election. She went on The One

Show recently, if she sticks to this policy her next appearance should be

on Total wipe-out that is what she is planning to do to the estates of

many elderly people. The Conservatives have created a cult of

the leader under Mrs May but if they persist with this policy in its

current form they will soon find out this isn't North Korea. The British

public are free thinkers who do not take kindly to being treated like

fools. Older voters in particular are not going to be brainwashed into

voting for Kim Young May and against their own financial interests on

such a huge scale. It is often said when there is weak opposition the

danger of bad Government escalates. And that is what we are seeing with

a Tory death tax. Mrs May's Tories think they can do what they like.

This policy is not just a dementia tax, it is a tax on all forms of

debilitating disease and infirmity that lead and elderly person to need

social care. Every extra week that they live, will lead to a further

loss of equity and what they can hand on to their children. This fact

will undoubtedly lead to an extra psychological toll on people already

struggling with disease. At the extreme end of the spectrum it is

likely even to make some elderly people feel regrettable to still be

alive. The Tory policy will cause specific anomalies and perverse

consequences I want to set out, and then hear answered by its advocates

if any can be found to field questions by the end of the day.

What happens for instance in a grown up child is sharing the house but

working full-time too? Does the house ged sold immediately on the

death of the elderly person? If so, that would render someone homeless

just as they have lost a parent, or if not, won't it leads to huge

anomalies and scope for fee avoidance? In fact this scheme, if

implemented in its present form, will create a whole new tax

avoidance industry, with elderly people piling into equity release

schemes and being given incentives to go on spending spree, to get the

remaining value of their assets down under ?100,000. The message from

government would be don't be successful, and don't be financially

responsible either. Another even more serious perverse

outcome could be that people who need social care refuse to accept

it, and try and muddle through in order to preserve their estate. With

the inever tab result they suffer far more falls and other accidents

round the home, which then necessitate long and expensive

hospital stays, or even bring about their premature death. This is a

devastating death tax, dreamed up on the back of an envelope, and

apparently winging its way into the Tory manifesto, without consultation

with expert opinion, the Cabinet, or even the ministers in charge of the

policy area in Government. It doesn't have to be this way, were

Governments to make better and deaf representative choices on public

spending. -- different. What is needed first is an immediate and

substantial injection of money into the social care system. Because Ukip

is prepared to cut unjustified public spending on the Barnett

Formula, HS2 and overseas end, we -- aid, we are able to offer such a

financial boost and will do so when we set out our manifesto on

Wednesday. But longer term, we also need an agreed way forward for

social care to ensure that risk is fairly pooled and bills are fairly

paid. Possibly solutions range from a national care service, as set out

by Andy Burnham some years ago, to insurance policies and products that

people could be encouraged to invest in. The Burnham route might have

something to commend it if the public could be assured the

resources of a national care service, funded out of tax revenue

could be protected against free loading, for instance by new

arrivals from other country, I am afraid that hurdle would not be

cleared if Labour were in Government because Labour has a reputation for

being generous to a fault with other people's money.

Were I in the shoes of the Tory today, the first thing I would do,

would be to recognise that Denis Healey's law of holes is now in

play, and for the uninitiated I should ex peninsula in this law is

very concise and simply states in regard to a hole, when you are in

one, stop digging. Declaring financial war on millions

of retired people, who spent a working life being responsible and

building up assets, does not amount to compassionate conservatism. It

amounts to retrail. So I offer this advice to team Teresa. Why don't you

at least offer people a meaningful choice. That is, after all, what

conservatism used to be about. So why not give people an option of

chipping in to a voluntary social care costs insurance system run by

Government from say the age of 50. If people pay in, and then need

care, they are covered and should not be charged a penny. If however,

they have chosen not to pay in, then at least you would have the

semblance of an argument for reclaiming the costs from a state --

estates after death. If you did this you could claim to be adding to your

manifesto proposal, rather than abandoning it all together.

Therefore sparing the blusheses of which ever young tar Quinn or

Jocasta stuck it in without proper stress testing or scrutiny. One

could tell from the Dee mean nor of Tory ministers set century out to

bat for this policy on the political programmes yesterday, that they knew

they were on a loser. So far the Conservative newspapers

have not really got stuck into the policy with full vigour. The ones

that care about their readers will do so this week, because it is an

unforgiveable attack on responsible and hard working people. My message

to all those who may be hit by the Tory policy, but would never vote

for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour is simple: Ask yourself what has been

the best way to influence the Conservative Party's behaviour and

policies in the recent past and the answer is obvious - by voting Ukip

or at least threatening to vote Ukip. Look how it worked on Brexit.

Look how it's working on grammar schools. So if I were in your shoes,

I'd tell Tory campaigners on the doorstep that you're going to vote

Ukip for a common sense and fair approach, if you do that, there's a

strong possibility this policy will be ditched all together. Or at least

greatly modified by the end of the week. Now I want to turn briefly to

the second leg of the Tory attack on the elderly and that's on the issue

of winter fuel allowance. The Conservatives tell us they will mean

test it, but will not say at what income level people will lose it.

Pensioners can be forgiven for suspecting the vast majority of them

will no longer be eligible. The Tories have claimed to be making a

principled case against universalism in this area and replacing it with

an assessment of need. So how come the very next day, after unveiling

the plan, the Prime Minister was helping Ruth Davidson to launch a

Scottish Tory manifesto that pledged to keep the allowance for all

pensioners north of the border? This is yet another example of the

English and indeed the Welsh being treated as second-class citizens

within the UK. There is simply no good reason why a millionaire

pensioner in Edinburgh should receive an allowance of up to ?300

to pay for winter fuel while pensioners on modest incomes in

Essex get nothing. It is the Barnett formula which leads to public

spending in Scotland being ?1700 per head higher than it is in England

that is behind this. So it's another vindication of Ukip's policy of

dumping that formula and replacing it with a needs-based funding system

instead. So Mrs May's social care plan is not conservative and her

winter fuel plan is not Unionist. Apart from that, I'm sure everything

is going fine on the Conservative and Unionist campaign. Thank you,

any questions? Yes. REPORTER: Does it mat foreyou win

your seat that you're contesting in this election or your party wins

anything at all? You might be referring to the point Paul Nuttal

made yesterday, which was simply that Ukip has shown it's able to

influence the course of politics in Britain without MPs and under the

current first-past-the-post system, it's propped, to date, easier for

Ukip to get the United Kingdom out of the European Union than it has to

get MPs elected into the House of Commons, but we hope to change that

in this election. We're not expecting an across the board level

of voting to match that of 2015, but we do believe we are very much more

successfully targeting the areas where we're very strong without

actually specifying the ranking of our target seats.

REPORTER: Do you think comments like that are helpful in terms of getting

the vote out? Comments like? REPORTER: It doesn't matter

necessarily if you don't have any MPs after this? I don't think we

would say it doesn't matter. It's better for Ukip to be represented in

the House of Commons as well as command the support of hundreds of

thousands or millions of people as well. But I think we're making the

point that one of the key ways that we've worked in recent years has

been frankly to scare the Conservative Party, in particular,

when they step out of line too badly. That's why I'm inviting older

people who get knocked up this week by Conservative campaigners if

enough of you say, we're thinking of voting Ukip because of this policy,

I don't see that it would last through next weekend. Harry you seem

amused. REPORTER: I'm always amused. Thank

you. Do you have reaction to the news that the Commonwealth feel the

need to send election monitors from Ghana, Australia and Mauritius to

oversee UK elections particularly in Birmingham. Is that something Ukip

welcome or do you think it makes a farce of our electoral system? I

think our electoral system has a lot of problems around postal voting on

demand, in some areas, in some inner city areas, there have been problems

in the past with intimidation of voters. I think people at the

Electoral Commission have recognised that certain features of the way

elections are run particularly in inner city areas are probably

disgraceful. I think there's no room for complacency at all. If we have

visitors from other countries to have a look and monitor, I think

that's quite welcome. It doesn't necessarily mean that their own

democratic systems are above criticism. I think it's perfectly

welcome. Let's have as many eyes on how things are done as possible.

Yeah. Go on. REPORTER: That ex-leader of the Lib

Dems, whatever his name is, he was on the radio this morning, waffling

on for about half an hour. They give him so much space (inaudible) He

really cut his own throat in the end. Even talking about (inaudible)

he kept talking so much and just was waffling. The more space they gave

him, the more he came out with nothing very good. It's typical of

the BBC. They keep pushing the Lib Dems all the time. Actually no, I've

had some criticisms of the BBC over recent years. We've got a policy of

scrapping the BBC License Fee. But I think during an election they're

quite entitled to put on politicians of lots of different parties. I

don't particularly see that increased exposure of Nick Clegg to

the masses is going to harm the prospects of Ukip or indeed any

other party at all. I think it's a great democratic festival, a general

election, so the more Clegg the better. Anyone else? Thank you very

much.