Caring for grandparents 'should be a family duty'

Baroness Deech, a leading lawyer, said grandparents currently provide child care worth 3.9bn, with five million of them spending three days a week caring for grandchildren.

This deprives many grandparents of a chance to earn their own living, Baroness Deech noted in a speech in London.

She added that 70 per cent of grandparents give financial support to grandchildren, with 470m a year contributed to trust funds.

She said: "In return for all that grandparents do, should there not be an obligation to keep them, and to keep parents, and reciprocate the care that was given by them to children and grandchildren in their youth?"

In her speech, Baroness Deech cited the Poor Law, dating back to Elizabethan times – and only repealed in 1948 – requiring the infirm and the poverty stricken to rely on their families, who were fined if help was not forthcoming.

But she said the possibility of switching support for grandparents away from the state was not now possible, for reasons including the burden on women in the family and the possibility of depriving older people of state benefits.