AGE UK’s report has finally provided the damning evidence needed to force the Government to act on social care spending.

The Independent Care Group (York and North Yorkshire) has argued for years that social care has never been properly funded, even in more prosperous times.

Now that spending is being slashed the situation has, as Age UK concludes, reached breaking point.

It is shameful that by 2014 we will be spending, in real terms, £250m less on older people’s care than we did ten years ago.

If things go on as at present, within four years a million people who need care may well be getting no funding support.

We must seize the opportunity to halt this decline and commit to spending an extra £2bn to £3bn on social care.

Otherwise we will be judged as the generation that turned its back on its older people.

Mike Padgham, Independent Care Group, York and North Yorkshire.