The crisis in social care cannot simply be wished away and no one can claim that enough is being done to deal with the problems the sector has been blighted by in recent years.

For Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to say that “we already have a 10-year plan to improve and to provide the social care that we want our grandparents, our parents, to have,” in response to whether there would be a plan to fix social care is not good enough.

If social care is omitted from either Labour or the Conservative’s manifesto, then it would betray a whole generation. It would also suggest that neither party really has a long-term sustainable plan to tackle the crisis in the NHS. The two issues go hand in hand. There is a direct correlation between many of the pressures faced by the NHS and the lack of social care provisions in place.

Labour’s refusal to commit to legislate its National Care Service plans in its first term is thoroughly disappointing.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins after appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. PIC: Lucy North/PA Wire

It isn’t about “jumping in” as Wes Streeting claimed, rather about grasping the nettle and fixing social care once and for all.

Years of neglect are not going to be fixed overnight and it will take time to restore the sector to an acceptable level. However, the population isn’t getting any younger and a failure to properly reform social care would be negligent. Throwing scraps of funding or pieces of legislation here and there are not going to be enough.

There also needs to be an acceptance on the electorate’s part that social care will have to be paid for in some way.

Ignoring social care in party manifestos would be negligent

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