Thank you, Mr Speaker. This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. [Interruption.] Thank you very much. Immediately following Prime Minister’s questions, I will attend the welcome home march-in to thank all those involved in Op Pitting, our evacuation from Kabul. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Nikki’s seven-year-old son had 37 seizures a day because of a brain disease he suffered from. He has had surgery now, but it is a struggle every day to get him to stay in school. Nikki is supporting the Acquired Brain Injury Bill because she believes that the Government need a cross-departmental strategy for supporting those who have an acquired brain injury, whether that is rugby players with concussion and dementia, women who have been beaten in the head by their partners, children who have suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, or soldiers who have been in explosions. I really hope that the Government are going to back the Acquired Brain Injury Bill, but above all we need a strategy to help 1.4 million people in this country. Will the Prime Minister give us that?
I thank the hon. Member for raising this vital issue and for his personal commitment to this cause. I can assure him that we are studying his proposed Bill and working to ensure that people do get support for the acquired brain injuries that they have received. What we can certainly pledge at this stage—I hope this will be of some use to him and the many who care about this issue in the way that he does, as I am sure Members do across the House—is that the Department of Health and Social Care will lead on the development of a cross-departmental Government strategy on acquired brain injury and other neurological conditions. I will be very happy to share details with him shortly.
Q3. In July this year, my constituency, Kensington, suffered devastating flooding, with more than 2,000 homes flooded, a river running down Portobello Road and a lot of residents having to move into temporary accommodation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Thames Water needs to come up with short and long-term solutions, and that it needs to make sufficient investment in infrastructure to prevent such events from happening again?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise flooding, and she is right about short and long-term solutions. That is why I am proud, among other things, to have helped to instigate the Thames Tideway Tunnel, with the biggest super-sewer in the history of this country, which will help to deal with what happens in London when the Bazalgette interceptors overflow and to deal with flooding throughout the city.
No, because if the right hon. and learned Gentleman looked at what we are proposing and if he supported what we are proposing—it is fixing something that Labour never fixed in all its years in office. We are saying to the people of this country that we will disregard their home as part of their assets if they and their spouse are living in it. No. 2, you can have a deferred payments agreement if you move out and are living in residential care. Most important of all, by putting the huge investment we are making now in health and social care, we are allowing, for the first time, the people of this country to insure themselves against the otherwise potentially catastrophic costs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Even if you are not one of those people who suffer from those afflictions, we are taking away the anxiety from millions of people up and down the land about their homes.
I think the Prime Minister just described the broken system he said he was fixing. It is certainly not a straight answer. Let us have another go. He used to say—[Interruption.] I see they’ve turned up this week, Prime Minister. [Interruption.]
Order. I do not think we need any further shouting. Yesterday, we had a very good example of the House at its best, in the cathedral. Please, let us show some respect. I want to be able to hear not only the Prime Minister, but the Leader of the Opposition. Shouting each other down does not do you or your constituents any good. We need to hear the questions and I certainly need to hear the answers. And if anybody does not like it, please leave now.
It is not a complicated question, so let us have another go. The Prime Minister used to say that nobody would have to sell their home to pay for their care—it is in his manifesto, right here. On the basis of that promise, he then put up tax on every working person in the country. Has he done what he promised and ensured that nobody will have to sell their home to pay for care, yes or no? It is not complicated.
No, it is not complicated, because what we are doing is disregarding your home as part of the assets that we calculate. If you go down to £100,000, that is the beginning of where we will ask you to contribute, but your home is not included in that. Labour has absolutely no plan. It has spent decades failing to address this. Only a few weeks ago, Labour Members failed to vote for the £36 billion that will enable us to fix this and to help people up and down the country—not just to fix the social care problem, but to pay for people to live in their own homes and receive the care they need in their homes. That is what this one nation Conservative Government are doing. Why will the right hon. and learned Gentleman not support it?
The Prime Minister has had two opportunities to stand by his manifesto commitment and he has not taken them. [Interruption.] He says he just has, so let us test this in the real world. Under the Prime Minister’s plans, a person with assets worth about £100,000, most of it tied up in their home, would have to pay £80,000. They would lose almost everything. How on earth does the Prime Minister think that they can get their hands on that kind of money without selling their home?
I am going to have a third go at trying to clear this up in the befuddled mind of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because it is important. The fact is that the Labour party has totally failed to address this. It has not had the guts to fix this in all its time in office. It is something left over from the Attlee Government and we are fixing it. Let me repeat for the third time: your home is disregarded. No. 2, even if you have a second—if you are in residential care, you have a deferred payments agreement. No. 3, we are allowing you to insure yourself for the first time against catastrophic consequences by capping it at £86,000. He stood on a manifesto to put the cap where? At £100,000!
The question was really simple, and it is the question that all his Back Benchers are asking. If you have a house worth about £120,000 to £140,000, how do you find £80,000-plus without selling your home? It is common sense.
Strip away the bluster, strip away the deflection and strip away the refusal to answer the question and there is the simple truth—and this is why the Prime Minister will not address it: people will still be forced to sell their home to pay for care. Why do they—[Interruption.] Look at the vote the other day to see the answer to that question. People will still be forced to sell their home.
It is another broken promise, just like the Prime Minister promised that he would not put up tax; just like he promised 40 new hospitals; just like he promised a rail revolution in the north. Who knows if he will make it to the next election, but if he does, how does he expect anyone to take him and his promises seriously?