Tory social care minister and architect of dementia tax loses his seat
AN architect of hated Tory social care plans lost his seat in what many are seeing as revenge for the party’s assault on pensioners.
Social care minister David Mowat admitted he “didn’t see it coming” after being ousted from Warrington South, losing by 2,549 votes to Labour’s Faisal Rashid, who overturned a 3,000-vote majority.
During his year-long stint in the Department of Health, Mowat admitted the Government had “no final answer” on how it was going to cope with the rising costs of social care, controversially calling for children to do more to look after their parents.
He is not standing again and has said he will take a step back from politics.
Andrew Neil SKEWERS Theresa May over dementia tax
Former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann branded the party’s controversial manifesto pledge – dubbed the dementia tax – “a complete and utter disaster”.
Under the Tory manifesto, the elderly must pay for their own care if they have combined savings and property worth more than £100,000.
Dementia is currently the leading cause of death in the UK and by 2040, it is estimated 219,409 people in England and Wales will die from dementia.