Talk of social care reform has dragged on for decades, but the time for plans and promises has passed. We are well beyond the point where delay is tolerable.

The costs of inaction are real and mounting: patients stuck in hospital beds for want of community care, families breaking under the strain, and councils pushed to the brink.

As someone who worked in the NHS and now sits on the Health and Social Care Select Committee, I’ve seen the consequences up close.

Our recent cross-party report found that millions of people across the country are going without the care they need. This isn’t just a social care crisis; it’s a healthcare crisis, an economic crisis, and a moral one too.

Here in Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphook and our surrounding villages, I’ve seen providers doing remarkable work despite the odds.

Recently visiting Shottermill House in Haslemere, CHD Living’s Brownscombe near Hindhead, and Cromwell Court in Bordon I saw places where skilled, compassionate teams are delivering care with dignity. But even the best services are navigating rising costs, workforce shortages, and unrelenting bureaucracy.

Instead of supporting them, the Government has chosen to hammer care providers with a National Insurance hike.

While the NHS has rightly been exempted, care homes and home care services have been left to shoulder the extra cost.

This isn’t just unfair - it’s short-sighted. Penalising care providers when we should be backing them will only deepen the crisis. To add insult to injury, the Government has promised a review, the Casey Commission, which won’t report until 2028.

That’s three more years of delay, three more years of sticking-plaster policies, while the sector bleeds talent and families are left to fend for themselves.

Change doesn’t need more contemplation. It needs leadership. Meanwhile, the cost of doing nothing continues to soar. Delayed discharges are draining NHS budgets.

Unpaid carers - mostly women, mostly family members - are providing support worth an estimated £180 billion a year. And yet they receive little in the way of recognition, and even less in financial support.

We need a system that values care, properly funds it, and ensures people can live with dignity in old age or illness. That means backing our care workforce, supporting families, and building long-term, sustainable solutions, not empty reviews and unfair tax grabs.

The longer we wait, the more it costs. In money. In capacity. And in human terms, most of all.