Last week, in an article published in the Financial Times, Andrew Dilnot, the Chair of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support called for David Cameron to override Treasury opposition to his proposed reforms.

As a financial planner and long-term care specialist at Ashcourt Rowan, I’ve been following the progress of the Dilnot report with interest. Andrew Dilnot clearly understands the issues, has put in the hard work and is passionate that his reforms happen.

My fear is that the Coalition will veto the proposals on a cost basis which may result in a watered down version of his proposals to such a degree that they won’t achieve what they set out to do. Dilnot is right to state that the biggest problem people have is the fear and loss of control of their money and not introducing a cap will simply make this worse. People worry about their hard earned cash disappearing and if the reforms end up with no cap, people will feel no different. The Dilnot proposals call for a cap on individuals’ lifetime contributions to social care costs of between £35,000 and £50,000 and when that cap is reached, people would be eligible for full state support for the care element of their costs.

A month into the new year, the issue of long term care has truly kicked in with high-profile announcements from Age UK with its care in Crisis 2012 Report and Andrew Dilnot last week with calls for the government to stop prevaricating and do something useful. However, I find it unlikely that the Prime Minister will get involved but will leave it to the Department of Health to sort the funding shortfalls out.

You can read the full report from the Commission on Funding of Care and Support here.