Has Ed Davey finally caught the heart of the nation by pledging to raise taxes for social care?

Ed Davey played the role of joker in the election pack with a series of silly stunts. But after grabbing voters’ attention, he has used it to highlight the Cinderella issue of social care.

The Liberal Democrat leader spoke movingly in a party election broadcast about his role as a carer for his 16-year-old son John, who is learning disabled, and for his mum as a teenager. He has undoubtedly struck a chord with the UK’s invisible army of up to 10 million unpaid carers.

Today, Davey launched the Lib Dem manifesto with a pledge to spend £9.4bn a year to “tackle the health and care crisis from top to bottom”, including the introduction of free personal care for adults in England. “As a carer for most of my life, this is personal for me,” he said.

Davey has done voters a service by putting social care on the election agenda when the Conservatives and Labour would rather talk about something else.

The Tories are still scarred by Theresa May’s “dementia tax” bombshell, which blew up her Commons majority at the 2017 election. They have legislated for a £86,000 cap on people’s lifetime care costs, recommended by the economist Andrew Dilnot in 2011, but shelved it until October 2025 as they cleared the wreckage of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. People with assets of under £100,000 would receive some help, while those with less than £20,000 would pay nothing.

Rishi Sunak insists the cap will go ahead – but is seen by ministers as sceptical about it. As chancellor, he forced Boris Johnson to put up national insurance to fund Johnson’s 2019 pledge to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”, but the rise was later cancelled, and the government resorted to the usual sticking plaster cash injections.

The Nuffield Trust estimates that fewer than half of older people with care needs receive support (including from unpaid carers). A 10 per cent cut to local authority budgets since 2010 means funding has failed to keep pace with a rising elderly population. Councils have the responsibility, but not the money, and one in three requests for funding results in no support.

The permacrisis is all the more shameful because of its impact on an overstretched NHS. About 12,000 people a day are fit to leave hospital but cannot be discharged due to the absence of a care package.

A sensible set of reforms for the first 100 days of the next government has been set out by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. But they might have to wait longer.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has a blueprint up his sleeve – a national care service drawn up by the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society. But Labour doesn’t want to “own” it because the Tories would stick a massive pound sign on it and upgrade their highly disputed claim Labour would raise tax by £2,000 for working households.

A Starmer government would act quickly to raise wages, via a “fair-pay agreement”, to help a sector plagued by about 150,000 vacancies. It would be a pilot for their extension across the economy.

Labour would probably keep the proposed £86,000 cap – partly because the current government has allocated the money for it. But the Labour manifesto, to be published on Thursday, will likely be opaque.

The proposed national care service would see government, local authorities and private providers, who run most care homes, operating as a public service with new standards on care quality, the workforce and financial conduct. Carers would be asked how much caring they wanted to do and have a right to short breaks. Labour’s eventual goal was to replace rationing and postcode lotteries with a guarantee of care.

Would Labour really end the depressing cycle of promises to end the care crisis? Possibly. One Labour insider told me: “We are serious. There is a plan, and we will make a start. But it won’t happen overnight because of the fiscal constraints. We would hope for a change of gear after two years.”

It’s a pity Labour can’t be a little more open now. But it’s all about the money. It’s quite possible that Labour ends up copying the Lib Dem manifesto proposals to increase capital gains tax and taxes on the banks. But Starmer is not going to advertise that before the election.

As the Commons’ fourth largest party and unlikely to be in government, the Lib Dems can afford to be more honest. Although some people ask “What is the point of the Lib Dems?”, who won only 11 seats in 2019, there is a point if voters want to get rid of the Tories. Tactical voting, boosted by an unofficial pact with Labour, could enable Davey’s party to win between 30 and 50 seats. While Nigel Farage might grab the headlines, many Tory candidates in the blue wall in the south rightly fear a yellow surge.