Sir, On Wednesday, March 16, the Alzheimer’s Society is holding a lobby of Parliament to highlight the shocking way in which the welfare of old people is consistently sidelined by this Government.

It is over five years since the Government’s Royal Commission into Long-term Care recommended that all nursing and personal care should be available on the basis of need, free at the point of use and funded from general taxation. Instead, the Government chose only to fund nursing care; elderly people must meet the costs of personal care such as washing, feeding themselves, and being helped with using the lavatory.

In a recent survey of 204 MPs by the Unison Right to Care campaign, more than eight in ten agreed that personal care should be provided free of charge for elderly people; an equal number agreed that “the distinction between personal and nursing care has caused practical problems in providing good quality, joined-up care to elderly and disabled people”.

Our welfare state is supposed to offer care from the cradle to the grave. The failure of the Government to fund long-term care leaves a huge gap.

If you suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or any other form of dementia the chances are that the Government will not pay your care costs; if you suffer from brain cancer, it will. There can be no conceivable justice in this.

Yours faithfully,
CLAIRE RAYNER
(Member, Royal Commission on Long-term Care),
Box 125, Harrow,
Middlesex HA1 3XE.
March 15.

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