Responding to the Chancellor’s Budget statement, Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Independent Age, the older people’s charity, said:
“The elephant in the room during this Budget was the massive black hole in health and social care funding. The silence at the dispatch box on these issues was deafening. While NHS trusts are £2.3 billion in deficit and there is a £4.3bn black hole in social care budgets by 2020, Westminster has yet again failed to provide any answers on how these will shortfalls will be met.
“It is clear that the usual Westminster party politics is failing to tackle these crucial challenges. That is why we support a cross-party, independent commission on the future of health and social care in this country.”