Our care system was in crisis even before Covid-19.

Millions of older and vulnerable people don’t get the support they need while carers, often family members, are expected to manage on their own.

A social care plan was promised by this Government but, with scant detail in its Health and Care Bill, that’s still a long way off.

Instead its focus is on how to fund the nation’s growing care costs but with everyday people disproportionately hit by a double whammy dubbed ‘a working class dementia tax’.

Firstly, you will pay more in National Insurance through the health and social care levy. While those living off wealth are protected.

Now the Conservatives are to break their election promise that “no one needing care has to sell their home to pay for it.”

Because some homeowners will indeed have to sell their property as the Tories are setting the cap - the maximum anyone will pay towards their care - at £86,000.

If you sadly get dementia and live in a terraced house somewhere in the North of England, worth £130,000, you could lose almost everything.

But if you live in a £1 million-plus house – found largely in the south - more than 90 per cent of your assets are protected. I call it ‘Robin Hood in reverse gear’.

Aside from the unfairness, the law going through Parliament will also ‘turbocharge’ NHS privatisation while opening the floodgates to Tory cronyism.

Private companies can sit on new bodies commissioning health care in 42 areas across England and compulsory competitive tendering will be abolished.

This will make it easier for services to be outsourced to the private sector without checks. I fear procurement via WhatsApp as self-serving Tory politicians promote their mates in VIP fast lanes.

Turning to a local issue on my mind. Anyone opposed to expansion plans for the Lostock waste incinerator needs to submit their objections by Thursday (December 2).

It wasn't wanted in the first place. We certainly don't want it burning yet more waste, spewing out more pollution and attracting more lorries when operational.

Last week a survey put Northwich in the top 10 happiest places to live in the North West. We want to keep it that way.

Please email your objections to beiseip@beis.gov.uk - and reference ‘Lostock Sustainable Energy Plant – Section 36 Consent Variation Application’.