AT THE root of the government's proposals to persuade people to take out insurance to cover the costs of long-term residential care in their old age, there is, it seems, a desire to find a general election vote-winner.

All the same, the problem of the costs of residential care does need addressing and the proffered solution is not without merit - though some firm conditions need to be attached to it.

But to begin with, cynics may observe that the government's prime concern is not that of ensuring that people get proper care should they ever need to go into an old people's home, rather two other things lie behind its White Paper proposals.

The first is a bid to limit the costs burden on the state of subsidising the less well-off elderly in residential care.

But, more importantly in the election stakes, it is seeking to woo the middle-class voters.

For it is they who are presently upset over elderly people, who are adjudged to be outside the limits of social security subsidy though their only real capital is the value of their home, being forced to sell their property to pay for long-term care. And there is a dual audience in this field.

The elderly themselves resent having to part with homes they have worked hard to purchase and their children see their inheritance disappearing as a result.

It is an issue that embraces millions - as, currently, one in five people needs long-term care in old age.

And the demographic trend of an increasing ageing population suggests that an even greater proportion will seek such care in future years.

The government is right, then, to address these needs, even if its proposals are launched on an electioneering platform.

However, in floating a scheme to tempt more people to cover the cost of potential care through such things as insurance policies or private pension plans, it needs to add some detailed small print.

Labour claims that, rather than helping the elderly protect their assets, it will destroy their savings as they will have to find some £10,000 for insurance premiums. The government's response of offering a bonus - with a sum of up to that amount being cited - to those who make this provision for their old age might diminish that scare, but some other adjustments will be needed.

For while it is right to reward the prudent with a bonus, how else might the less far-sighted be drawn into the private insurance net - when many may seek, instead, to deliberately dispose of their assets in order to come under the social security umbrella and others may simply gamble that they will be not be one of those who may need residential care?

Additionally, throwing the problem at the private sector pensions and insurance market will not be putting it in the hands of altruists. For if the experience of the deregulation of the pensions market and the subsequent scandal of unscrupulous selling of too-dear pensions cover to millions of people is borne in mind, then some cast-iron protection of the elderly from such spivvery must be included in the government's proposals.

Nevertheless, the problem is there and is growing and the government is right to confront it.

And for all its knocking today, Labour - with its own admission that the welfare state's provisions must now be wedded to "individual responsibility" - will be hard-pressed to craft an alternative plan much different from this.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.