The chair on the commission of funding of care was speaking during the Westminster Health Forum this morning.
Prof Dilnot said health and social care secretary Wes Streeting had reneged on promises to deliver on reforms legislated by the previous Government, including a lifetime £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England will need to spend on their personal care and raising the point at which people become eligible to receive some financial support from their local authority, will rise to £100,000 from the current £23,250.
The reforms, which were due to be implemented in October 2023, were never introduced.
In his Government commissioned report in July 2011, Prof Dilnot recommended raising the means-test threshold from £23,250 to £100,000 and introducing a £35,000 lifetime cap on social care costs.
Prof Dilnot said politicians of all ‘shapes, sizes and political persuasions have promised to do something about social care and failed to do it'.
The former Government advisor said means-tested social care provision by local government had been ‘chronically underfunded for the best part of two decades, and that's something that Governments of all political persuasions should be embarrassed by and ashamed of'.
He said the lack of a sustainable social care funding system had been highlighted by the announcement of emergency funding for social care by the Treasury in virtually year during the last decade.
‘If you're having to do something every year and you're calling into an emergency, then you need to wake up,' Prof Dilnot said.
‘The allocation of emergency funds in year every year is a silly way of providing resources for social care. It means that all too often those resources are not well spent, because they arrive too late in the year to be well spent.'
The economist and broadcaster called for ‘a sensible long-term plan for the funding of the new, tested social care system'.
He said the Government's 10-Year Health Plan had been ‘naïve' by failing to offer a plan for reform for social care.
‘We're not going to be able to resolve all of the challenges that face the NHS unless we resolve the challenges facing social care,' Prof Dilnot said. ‘We can't even begin to do that until we have a sensible, long run plan for funding of the needs system. We don't have that. That's an embarrassment. It means that people working in local authorities are being asked to make decisions that are just too difficult for anybody to make. They have inadequate resources and they're having to allocate them across people, all of whom need help and some of whom are not going to get it. That's a disgrace.'
On his second policy recommendation for Government, Prof Dilnot called for a ‘risk pooling' for those not eligible for means-tested support through a social care costs cap.
Concluding Prof Dilnot said he was ‘optimistic', however, the review being carried out by Baroness Casey would ‘very quickly see what needs to be done and encourage the current Government and its successors, jolly well, get on with it'.
The Casey Commission is to be undertaken in two phases with the first phase focused on developing a national care service and a fair pay agreement reporting back in 2026 and the second phase addressing longer term reform concluding in 2028.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘This Government is committed to building a National Care Service that is fair and affordable for all.
‘We have already taken decisive action, helping people live independently in their own homes by providing £172m for the Disabled Facilities Grant, increasing the Carer's Allowance weekly earnings limit and strengthening care careers through a new career structure, qualifications and opportunities for learning and development.
‘But there is far more to do. Baroness Casey has started her work on the independent commission into adult social care and will build cross-party consensus. She will publish her first recommendations for proper reform of social care next year.'
