GOVERNMENT hopes of safeguarding pensioners' homes from having to be sold off to pay for nursing home care got a big thumbs down today.

For homeowners were warned they are being asked to "sign a blank cheque" by the Whitehall scheme.

The caution came from an influential Commons committee which has been examining the multi-billion pound problem of long term care for elderly people.

Members of the Health Committee looked particularly at the controversy surrounding the increasing number of elderly people forced to sell homes they had hoped to pass on to their families, but have to go into residential care instead.

In a bid to solve this growing problem the Government earlier this year proposed an insurance-based Partnership Schemes which raised the level at which assets were discounted when pensioners were means tested for care.

The MPs found, however, that similar schemes operating in the United States are expensive and likely to be too dear for many homeowners.

But the committee's main complaint was the Government's failure to provide any real estimates - or even "rough-and-ready costings" - on the likely price tag for such schemes.

The MPs said: "Until such costings are provided, the taxpayer is in effect being invited to sign a blank cheque."

The committee rejected claims that providing long term care for elderly people was reaching a crisis.

Such suggestions, say the MPs, were founded on unsound evidence or were even "downright alarmist".

Although the problems of meeting the bill for long term care were real, they were more manageable than many recent reports had suggested.

On the contentious question of whether homeowners should have to sell their properties to pay for nursing home care the committee, the MPs avoided any clear cut conclusion.

The inquiry was told of widespread anger that those who worked and saved to buy a home had to sell while people who spent their money and had no assets received residential care free.

The MPs accepted there was an understandable desire to pass on an inheritance but said it was "neither equitable nor desirable to create a system which guarantees all assets will be safeguarded for inheritors in all circumstances".

However, today's report stresses that Government policy makers will have to take account of "the widespread perception that the present arrangements for funding long-term care are unfair".

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