When he became Prime Minister, Boris Johnson stood outside Downing Street and pledged to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all’.

However, this Johnson promise was broken, just like so many others. People are still having to sell their homes to pay for care and the sector faces a workforce crisis, and the sector faces a workforce crisis. Far from ‘fixed’, social care is on its knees.

Although his inability to stick to his word is well documented, Johnson is hardly the first, or the last, Conservative Prime Minister who has failed to take the social care crisis seriously.

Earlier this week, Rishi Sunak’s Government confirmed that they were slashing £250m from the funding designed to boost the workforce caring for elderly and disabled adults, despite estimated 165,000 vacancies. In contrast, the Chancellor’s recent Spring Statement saw £1bn given to the richest 1% in pension tax breaks. Politics is about choices, but the choices the Government are making are all wrong.

It is a total betrayal, but only adds to the trail of broken commitments and false dawns we have experienced over the past 13 years.

Locally, the Labour Party have made repeated attempts for Suffolk County Council and its providers to adopt the Real Living Wage, to help ease the severe retention and recruitment problems social care is facing, but to no avail. It remains a personal regret that, despite the sacrifices made by public sector workers during the pandemic, the Real Living Wage proposal I put forward in December 2020 was voted down by Conservative councillors.

Social care workers are exhausted and underpaid with many looking for alternatives. They love what they do, but they can’t continue to put themselves and their families under such financial and emotional toil indefinitely.

Meanwhile, hospitals are struggling to discharge patients due to a lack of social care availability and this is having wider ramifications for our NHS.

Hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for assessments, care packages, direct payments or reviews. Tragically, almost 150,000 people have died waiting for state social care in the past five years.

As the i’s Paul Waugh put it so powerfully, the Government wouldn’t dream of telling someone diagnosed with cancer that they were on their own until they spent their life savings to pay for their care, but when it comes to people diagnosed with dementia or similar conditions, that is exactly what they are doing.

This cannot go on.

Labour’s New Deal for Care Workers looks to resolve some of the problems that have been allowed to take root, ensuring that there is proper career progression for frontline staff, and establishing binding agreements on minimum pay, terms and conditions. We would change the remit of the Low Pay Commission to take into account cost of living pressures, ensuring that the living wage lives up to its name.

A Labour government would also fundamentally shift the focus of support to prevention and early intervention, so that more people can be cared for in their own home.

Transforming support for unpaid family carers is crucial too, and Labour would provide them with proper information, advice and breaks, and give more flexibility at work so people can better balance work and family life.

After 13 years of sticking plasters, our country needs social care to be treated with as much ambition as the 1945 Labour Government that brought in the NHS. The NHS is the beating heart of Britain and it was Labour’s proudest achievement. Delivering a National Care Service under a future Labour Government will be just as transformative.