BORIS Johnson has admitted a “clear plan” he claimed to have to fix the country’s growing social care crisis never existed.

The Prime Minister said he accepted it "needs to be developed”, despite previously proclaiming it was already "prepared".

Mr Johnson has since claimed his plan for Brexit is "oven-ready" and good to go.

In his first speech as Prime Minister in July, Mr Johnson said outside Number 10t: “My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.

“So I am announcing now - on the steps of Downing Street - that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared.”

However the plan to cope with a growing elderly population with chronic care problems such a dementia was conspicuously absent from the Tory election manifesto.

Instead, the Prime Minister said his party would put an extra £1bn a year into social care and “build a cross-party consensus to bring forward an answer that solves the problem”.

On the BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Johnson was pressed about his party’s “terrifyingly bad record on the NHS [in England]”, including the highest number of patients on waiting lists ever, the worst A&E performance since targets began.

Mr Johnson said: “The NHS is doing a fantastic job under terrific pressure, and I do not for one minute deny the pressure that the NHS is under.”

It was put to him that one of those pressures on the NHS was social care as a lack of local authority social care places often keeps elderly patients stuck on wards.

Read his Downing Street quote about a prepared plan and asked where it was, Mr Johnson said: “I’ll tell you. We will fix the crisis in social care, and you’re absolutely right that the interface between the NHS who do an incredible job and the social services and local councils is one of the most difficult areas of care. So we’ve put £1.5bn in to help councils.”

When it was put to him that that wasn’t a plan, the PM said: “It does a lot in the short-term. Every year for the next five years we’ll put an additional £1bn in, so that we can recruit the carers that we need, so that local councils are helped. A billion pounds is useful.

“I accept that the full plan needs to be developed.”

Mr Marr said: “So when you said you’d got a plan you hadn’t got a plan, had you?”

Referring to the architect of the NHS, Mr Johnson replied: “Actually, I think there is an emerging national consensus about this, and that we are getting ready for, as it were, a Beveridge moment in our country.

“When people understand that we do need as a nation to tackle this issue. What we want to do is reach across politics and bring people together, to take the toxic divisions out [of the political debate].”

After Mr Johnson said he wanted people to have dignity in old age without selling their homes to pay for care, Mr Marr said those were aspirations rather than a plan.