The Government is just kicking the can down the road on social care - Andrew Vine

Hence the tears, because she – and her late husband - had planned all their lives to pass the house to their daughter.

I couldn’t find any reply to what she said next. She’s 96, very frail but mentally alert, and hopes she’ll die before the house must be sold. She prays for it every night before going to sleep.

There must be thousands of similar conversations happening all over Yorkshire, as families in various states of worry – even anguish – over care and what it costs grapple with the consequences of a crisis that has gone unaddressed for far too long.

Politicians swerve the issue while savings amassed over a lifetime are exhausted and old people wish for death so they can leave at least something to those they love the most.

This old lady doesn’t for a second blame the care home for the hike in fees. The letter she received was apologetic and honest, explaining that it was because of the rise in the minimum wage and increased national insurance costs, two decisions taken by the government.

And even though the increased costs prey on her mind, she knows she’s one of the lucky ones to have a place in a well-run home which is comfortable and where the staff are kind.

There is a waiting list for rooms, and behind every name on it is a story of an old person struggling to cope at home and a family desperately wondering what to do for the best.

Most of the people on the list won’t be around in three years’ time when the government finally gets around to proposing a solution to the social care crisis, which by then will be worse.

There will be more names on waiting lists, more unfilled vacancies for carers to add to the 100,000-plus we have now, more families wondering where to turn, and more elderly people praying they pass peacefully in the night to spare the worries of those they love.

None of us should kid ourselves that 2028 will mark even the beginning of the end of the care crisis.

Even if the government commits to implementing whatever Baroness Louise Casey comes up with in her report into how care is provided and paid for, it will take years before any meaningful improvements happen because matters have been allowed to become so bad.

And that’s without any proposals being stymied by the approach to a 2029 general election.

If Baroness Casey puts forward some form of new tax to fund care, will any party really want to fight an election on a manifesto that is explicit about taking money out of voters’ pockets, especially those of the young, for whom care can seem a very remote issue?

In announcing an unnecessary three-year review into care, the government has attempted the same con-trick that all its predecessors have been guilty of.

It has kicked the can down the road, in the forlorn hope that something will turn up to make things better, when anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the realities of care knows full well it won’t.

This lengthy review – despite Baroness Casey’s impressive track record in getting things done – is vanishingly unlikely to tell us anything we don’t already know.

In delaying decisive action to get a grip on one of the most grievous crises afflicting Britain, the government is also undermining one of its key objectives, which is to fix the NHS.

Overcrowded hospitals and ever-lengthening waiting times for operations cannot be sorted out unless the care crisis is solved, because the two issues are inextricably linked. Bed-blocking by elderly patients who cannot be discharged from hospital because there is nowhere for them to go is not going to solve itself by 2028.

Addressing how people are cared for should have been a priority for the government in its first year. The size of its Parliamentary majority gives it the means to force changes through, even if they are unpalatable to hard-pressed taxpayers who will have to fork out even more.

The author of a 2011 report on social care, Sir Andrew Dilnot, last week condemned the delay as unnecessary and said Sir Keir Starmer should act before the end of this year.

He’s right. This is a crisis that can’t wait another three years, and insisting that it must is an act of political and moral cowardice.