A former Conservative Minister has blamed the party’s manifesto for its election failure, describing it as “badly thought through”.

The Conservatives failed to win a majority in the general election last week, despite hopes of boosting the previously slim advantage it held in the House of Commons.

The party had as much as a 20-point opinion poll lead at the beginning of the campaign.

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Baroness Ros Altmann, who had been the Pensions Minister until last summer, when Theresa May came to power, claimed social care proposals “alienated core voters and would have made the care crisis even worse”.

She said: “The Tory Manifesto was a turning point in the election campaign. To say the policy announcements on pensions and care were badly thought through would be an understatement. They don't really seem to have been thought through at all.

“Mass means-testing of pensioners has already been discredited due to the disincentives it poses to private pension saving.

“To extend means-testing in this arbitrary manner, without consultation and without proper understanding of how the policy would impact on pensioners, was a mistake of monumental proportions. To combine the two, looked like a punishment to families with loved ones who were ill, not just to older people.

“This policy proposal is not only politically poisonous, because it hits the very people who are most likely to vote Tory - those who own their own home, or who have built up a nest-egg or some assets to pass on to their loved ones; it also would not solve the social care crisis anyway. All the political pain, for no policy gain.

“There are so many reasons why the Tory Manifesto Care reforms were disastrous, not only because they were politically poisonous, but they would also actually make the care crisis worse.”