There was great excitement last week at the prospect that the Government would be announcing plans to reform the funding of social care. In the end, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, this announcement was deferred. The great game of waiting for social care reform goes on (and on, and on).

Last month it was a decade since the Dilnot Commission proposed a fixed cap on an individual’s liability for care costs in the hope that this certainty would create a viable insurance market. It is nine years since we, at LGIU, ran an inquiry for the Local Government All Party Parliamentary Group which concluded that we needed integration of health and social care and that money needed to be diverted from NHS budgets to prevention.