Crisis in care: what do MPs think?

Unlocking a solution to the social care crisis will require political leadership and, ideally, a cross-party consensus. Successive governments have failed to address this issue and the current Government has been promising to bring forward proposals in a green paper for more than two years, but that has yet to materialise.

To inform government thinking ahead of the green paper and the expected spending review in autumn 2019, our Health for Care coalition wanted to test the views of MPs on whether they believe there is a crisis in social care, whether they have noticed an increase in their constituency casework regarding social care, and what options for reform they would favour.

We commissioned independent polling company ComRes to survey a representative sample of MPs 1 between the end of March and the middle of May 2019.

A summary of the key findings is as follows:

• Three quarters of MPs (76%) agree there is a crisis in social care, with over a third (35%) strongly agreeing that this is the case. This includes more than half (58%) of Conservative MPs.
• Six in ten MPs (60%) believe their constituents are suffering because of cuts in social care. However, there is a significant difference across political parties, with a third of Conservative MPs (32%) saying this compared to 94 per cent of Labour MPs.
• Two thirds of MPs (65%) say their social care casework has increased during their time in office, with nearly half (46%) saying it has increased significantly. – Two thirds of MPs (67%) agree that funding social care effectively is a priority for the government, but this drops to 42 per cent for Labour MPs.