Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has made an appearance on a care sector podcast, showing the party’s dedication to making social care the focal point of its manifesto.

On a recent Voices of Care podcast – a platform launched by Newcross Healthcare – Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats and MP for Kingston and Surbiton, called on the next government to reach a cross-party consensus to reform social care, including properly honouring the role of unpaid carers.

The MP also called the current Care Allowance “an absolute disaster”.

Census data from 2021 showed that more than five million people in England and Wales over the age of five were providing unpaid care in 2021; although research from Carers UK in 2022 estimates the number of unpaid carers could be as high as 10.6 million. The entire health and social care system relies on these individuals.

Davey stated: “We clearly need to look after our care professionals much better than we do, but I think care professionals would be the first to say, ‘let’s also look after the families and the loved ones and the neighbours and the friends who do the vast bulk of caring’. I’m not talking about childcare, I’m talking about looking after disabled people, looking after elderly relatives, looking after spouses.

“We need better training for, and structures in place to support unpaid carers. At 12 years old, when I was caring for my terminally ill mother and administering morphine, I wish I had some training.”

Research from Carers UK and Sheffield University in May 2023 showed that unpaid carers in the UK contribute £162 billion per year to the economy. The report stated: “Providing increasing hours of unpaid care, family members have no choice but to give up work or reduce their hours to do so, also putting their physical and mental health needs to one side.”

Census data from 2021 suggests that there are over two million carers who are employees and, according to the State of Caring 2023 Survey, 40% of carers surveyed-many providing more than 50 hours a week of unpaid care – said they had given up work to focus on unpaid care and 22% had reduced their working hours. Nearly half (49%) of carers who had given up work or reduced their working hours had seen their income reduce by over £1,000 per month. 

Davey commented: “We need to make it a lot easier for people who can work alongside caring to do so. It keeps them mentally healthy, brings in more money and avoids going from a avoids double-income family to a no-income family just because of the unluckiness of health.

“People who are doing full-time caring for loved ones… guess what – oftentimes they are quite poor. It is not right that we treat unpaid carers in this way. There’s a big debate over Carers Allowance, it needs complete reform it is an absolute disaster.

“One thing I hope we can do much better on is make people understand that care is a tough job, it should be valued much more, and we need to both recognize that and provide support.”

Some observers hail the arrival of Integrated Care Systems as potentially offering a truly integrated health and social care system, as noted by the podcast’s host, Suhail Mirza: “So, perhaps with ICBs there might be this community approach where actually access to training for family carers could be part of a bigger solution in terms of the people that we need to deliver these services?”

Ed added: “There’s the potential to do that, but I’m going to be honest, I’m a little bit cynical whether it’s happening. There is the the framework, but when I talk in my local constituency, for example community pharmacists fall outside that model, they’ve not been brought into them.

“When I think of the voice of family carers, I don’t really hear it in that model and I am not having a go at some of the health commissioners, but whether that’s changed their mentality and the culture, I don’t know. Because if you really are going to reach out to families and family carers, if you really are going to reach out outside the NHS to people like community pharmacists and so on, you do need a change of mindset and that will take time.”