General election 2017: Theresa May struggles to defend 'dementia tax' U-turn in BBC interview – as it happened

22 May 201708.16 EDT

Matthew Weaver

This is what Jeremy Corbyn said about the Tory U-turn at the Labour event in Hull.

A Tory U-turn on social care would be extremely welcome because I want this country to face up to its responsibilities to those who need care, either frail elderly, those with special needs, those with severe disabilities, those with learning difficulties.

And our proposals are that we will refund social care, putting emergency money into it, so that a million people waiting for social care don’t wait. And we won’t get involved in this horrible policy that the Tories have put forward which will actually damage families and family income, damage people, break up relationships, all kinds of horrible things will happen from this very dangerously ill-thought out social care policy.

And if George Osborne is at last doing something useful in his life of supporting proper funding for social care, then thank you George for that. And I urge him to read very carefully [what] our manifesto says on social care.

Corbyn also said a “dementia tax” would be “horrible”.

Here is Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s election coordinator, on the Tory U-turn.

Theresa May has thrown her own election campaign into chaos and confusion. She is unable to stick to her own manifesto for more than four days. And by failing to put a figure for a cap on social care costs, she has only added to the uncertainty for millions of older people and their families.

This is weak and unstable leadership. You can’t trust the Tories - if this is how they handle their own manifesto, how will they cope with the Brexit negotiations?

Oh dear. Last week Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, said explicitly that the Tories were dropping plans for a cap on the social care costs that people would have to pay.

No one can say anymore that this election is boring. This was a remarkable announcement, because there is no precedent in recent years for a party having to rewrite a major manifesto so completely and so quickly during an election campaign.

The best that can be said for May’s move is that, if you are going to have to perform a policy U-turn, it is best to get it over and done with quickly. A day’s embarrassment is well worth putting up with if it results in policy on a major issue ending up in a place where it is defensible and not haemorrhaging votes, which is what the social care policy seemed to be doing. The Tories abandoned one of the biggest items in their budget earlier this year (the increase in national insurance for the self-employed) and, although that led to dire headlines on the day, it did not destroy the Conservative lead over Labour on the issue of economic competence.

It is also worth remembering that dramatic campaign moments (e.g. Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy) often have less impact on an election result than observers assume at the time.

That said, it has been an awful morning for May - possibly her worst as prime minister. During the Q&A after her speech she came close to losing her composure, and the footage of her, voice rising, claiming “nothing has changed” (as she confirmed that it has) was an image consultant’s nightmare.

In particular, she has inflicted serious damage on the “May brand” in three ways.

1 - May does not look so “strong and stable” anymore. Until the manifesto came out, “strong and stable leadership” was almost the entire Conservative campaign. Even today, May was pushing this message strongly. (See 10.34am.) Now it looks far less plausible.

2 - This undermines the Tories’ reputation for financial competence. Imposing a cap on social care costs will significantly increase the costs of social care, probably by a matter of billions per year over the next decade. But we don’t know by how much, because the Tories never gave any indication of how much their plans were expected to raise when they announced them last week, and they are not giving any clue as to what level the cap will be imposed at. The Labour party would be crucified if it made policy in such a costings vacuum.

3 - May was remarkably dishonest when she tried to defend her U-turn. After calling an election when she said she wouldn’t, May’s claim to be a straightforward and reliable politician was open to challenge, but today she waded fully into Pinocchio territory. She claimed this morning that she was only having to clarify her position because Labour and Jeremy Corbyn had been making “fake claims” about the manifesto. But this is simply not true; the Labour claims about a “dementia tax” have been based on a tendentious but accurate assumption about what the plans announced last week would mean. (May seemed to imply that a cap on social care costs was implied in what the manifesto said last week, if not stated explicitly, but this is not true; the manifesto said the plans for a floor not a cap on costs - see 11.57am - were “more equitable, within and across the generations, than the proposals following the Dilnot report [Dilnot proposed a cap], which mostly benefited a small number of wealthier people.) May is right to say her manifesto plans would not mean people losing their home while they are alive, and in her head she may be using this to justify her claim that her plans were being misrepresented. But Labour has not been saying people would lose their homes while still alive.

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At the Labour launch Jeremy Corbyn welcomes the U-turn. He says that if George Osborne is now doing something useful with his life, that is to be welcomed.

Q: Someone with dementia will have to use up their inheritance. But someone who dies of cancer will be able to pass on £1m because you have raised the inheritance tax threshold. So it is a dementia tax. How is that fair?

May is shaking her head as the question gets asked, objecting to the term dementia tax.

She says the questioner (my colleague Jessica Elgot) is using a term used by the Labour party.

Q: Will anything else in the manifesto change?

May says nothing has changed. She says she has offered a sustainable solution to the problem of social care.

Q: Why did you grant asylum to the man arrested for the killing of Yvonne Fletcher?

May says there are rules that apply to the granting of asylum.

May invites a question from the Daily Post (the north Wales paper).

Q: What guarantees can you give to farmers?

May says the government will devise its own system of support for farmers. It will be devised by us, not someone else.

Q: [From Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick] I don’t recall another election manifesto U-turn. The lady is for turning. Doesn’t this show you are wobbly. What will the cap be? £100,000, £200,000, £500,000?

May says she has not changed the principles behind what she is proposing.

Q: You have buckled under pressure. Isn’t this just an attempt to save votes?

May says she has been clear about the principles that will apply. But she has clarified now that there will be an upper limit people will have to pay.

She says she is lifting the amount that people can keep to four times the level it is now.

This will produce a sustainable solution, she says.