Unpaid carers are often forgotten or at best taken for granted by politicians - Andrew Vine

ITV’s Who Cares for Our Carers?, presented by Lindsey, used the couple’s story to spotlight the emotional and physical demands faced by this country’s army of unpaid carers.

Often forgotten or at best taken for granted by officialdom, these men, women and children work tirelessly and selflessly caring for loved ones. According to Lindsey’s programme, if a price could be put on what they do it would be worth £162bn a year.

Such a vast sum not only illustrates how great the need for care is, but also raises the unsettling question of what would happen to countless vulnerable people without the devotion of those caring for them.

That is a question asked constantly by those doing the caring, like a couple I know in their mid-70s who look after their severely disabled son, now in his 40s.

Caring for him is both physically and emotionally draining. Lifting him in and out of bed, or the shower, or the wheelchair, grows increasingly difficult with every year and they worry constantly about what will happen when they are no longer able to manage or after they have gone.

Their worries about the future are only deepened by the relentless erosion of support they receive because of council cutbacks.

As they have grown older and additional help has become more necessary if their son is to be looked after properly, it has instead diminished.

The number of visits they receive from paid carers has halved over the past decade, and residential respite care for their son, which gives them a chance to rest and regain the strength to carry on, has gone from being regular to rare.

The question of who cares for the carers posed by Lindsey is one they ask themselves endlessly. But nobody in the Government is coming up with any satisfactory answers.

Coincidentally, on the same day Lindsey’s documentary aired, the increasingly intractable issue of the mounting demand for care and its cost was at the heart of a disturbing report by the Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

It warned of an “out of control” financial crisis for councils that could tip some into bankruptcy without a £4bn injection of funds from the Government.

And care is a key reason why local authorities are on the edge, because it is consuming 70p out of every £1 councils have to spend.

The cross-party committee’s Labour chairman, Sheffield South East MP Clive Betts, said unless the Government plugs the gap in funding, even well-run councils are at risk of going bust.

The crisis is all too apparent in our region, with Bradford and Kirklees councils both on the brink and having to make extensive cuts.

The extent of the problem nationally was shown by the Government’s announcement of £600m extra for councils in England – most of which will go on social care – in response to a threatened rebellion by its own backbench MPs who fear a backlash from voters angry at seeing services cut despite council tax rising in a couple of months’ time.

But the Local Government Association says the £600m is nothing like enough to address the deep-seated financial problems caused by spiralling care costs, and the likelihood of the Chancellor doing anything about that when he delivers his Budget a month from today is remote.

The moment in 2019 when new Prime Minister Boris Johnson stood in Downing Street and declared that he had a plan to fix social care now feels like ancient history, though it is less than five years ago.

Like so much of what he said, it wasn’t true. There might have been an intention, but there was no properly costed or funded plan.

Shortages of care, and the funds to provide it, have only grown worse since then and the verbal duelling between Conservatives and Labour ahead of the general election is not throwing up any credible answers from either party about how they will solve a crisis that leaves the vulnerable without the help they need.

Instead of point-scoring, the Government and Opposition would better spend their time on agreeing that care is a national necessity that should be above partisan posturing and trying to achieve cross-party consensus on how best to provide it.