13:52

Despite Boris Johnson’s repeated promises to “fix the crisis” in social care, the budget offered few pointers as to how government will address underlying funding problems faced by overstretched services for vulnerable older and disabled people.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced that local government would be able to draw upon a short term £5bn coronavirus emergency fund shared with the NHS to support social care services and vulnerable people affected by Covid-19.

However, there was no mention in the chancellor’s speech of longstanding pressures on adult social care, other than a vague commitment to address “in the next few months” an issue that has left services at breaking point and hundreds of thousands of older people without care, or struggling to pay for it.

Prof John Appleby of the Nuffield Trust thinktank said:

We are about to rely on these threadbare services to keep thousands of vulnerable patients out of hospital – and yet we still will not give them the funding and reform they have desperately needed for years. Coronavirus may serve as a reminder that inaction has consequences.

Sally Copley, director of policy and campaigns at Alzheimer’s Society, said: