Tories Buy Up ‘Dementia Tax’ Google Adverts to Beat Negative Press on Manifesto Announcement

Conservative election strategists have bought advertising space with internet search engine giant Google to beat bad publicity over the so-called ‘dementia tax’ — ensuring their own take on the controversy comes ahead of negative news articles.

The widely criticised Conservative manifesto promise to shake up the funding of old age care has been widely panned as strongly disadvantaging middle-class families and elderly people suffering from long-term degenerative illness, like dementia.

But rather than allow scathing press coverage surrounding the policy come to the top of Google searches for terms like “Dementia Tax”, Conservative headquarters have bought advertising space ensuring their side of the story comes first, with a link to a special page on the party website proclaiming “The So-Called ‘Dementia Tax’ – Get The Truth on the Plans‎”.

The Labour Party has now apparently followed suit with an advert of their own — appearing directly below the Conservative advert but above regular search results — offering searchers the opportunity to get “The Real Facts” on the “The Conservative Dementia Tax”.

The Conservative page claims Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has been “running a scare campaign of false claims to deliberately mislead some of the most vulnerable members of our society” over the policy reform, and that the new way will mean the elderly will no long have to sell their homes in their own lifetimes to pay for care. Labour, on the other hand, claim on their “Dementia tax” landing page that “Tory proposals do nothing to protect those with long term conditions, and fail to put forward a long-term solution to deal with challenges in our social care system”.

Under the new plans, a greater proportion of care costs would have to be borne by pensioners, but only after they had passed away, by the Government recovering costs from their estate — including from the value of their homes. It could mean that the benefactors of elderly relatives with some, but not significant, assets could see their inheritance nearly wiped out by the Government’s take.

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