On an average day, around one in ten hospital beds in England are occupied by someone medically fit to leave, but unable to do so because the care they need at home is not available. At an estimated cost of £562 per hospital bed per day, this costs £2.7 billion a year.

Pressure is also building at the front door of hospitals: ambulance queues, ever-longer waits in accident and emergency departments, and patients treated on trolleys in corridors. One reason is that an estimated 3.5 million people in England are not receiving adequate care at home. Without it, they are more likely to fall, become malnourished or dehydrated, develop infections or pressure sores, and ultimately require hospital admission.

This is both inhumane and inefficient. The Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, led by Baroness Louise Casey, describes social care as a system of “cobbled together, underfunded services relying on low-paid care workers, a lack of ownership and accountability, and a deep divide between health and social care”.

Read more: Can social care ever really be fixed? Experts react to the latest in a long line of promises

Why, when every government since 1997 has commissioned an inquiry into how to fund adult social care, is there still no plan?

The first reason is cost to the Treasury. In 1999, a Royal Commission recommended personal care should be funded, like health, through general taxation, but Tony Blair’s New Labour government rejected this outright. The Dilnot inquiry recommended a cap on care costs in 2011. Although legislated for in 2014, successive governments delayed........

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