May I start by saying how delightful it is to see you back in your proper place, Madam Deputy Speaker? You are very welcome back.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) not only on instigating the debate but on much of what he said. He said that he wished to speak in a non-partisan way, and he approaches the subject as the Chair of the Select Committee, while I approach it as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care. I found myself nodding in agreement with significant amounts of what he said, particularly the point about the need for long-term thinking and for a quite radical change in the way that we fund adult social care.
That is not just agreed across the House now, but has been for some decades. The hon. Gentleman went as far back as Gordon Brown. I can go back further: I have identified Tony Blair talking to the Labour conference in the 1990s, saying that social care was one of the big issues that he wanted to address in government. Here we are, a quarter of a century later, and we have got through it with a series of short-term efforts and sticking plasters. Long-term plans have been produced and promised but none of them has ever been put into policy. Throughout that quarter of a century of debate, the one thing that has been agreed is that the social care sector needs long-term funding.
The current Prime Minister and Chancellor have understood the importance of a long-term strategy and funding base for the sustainability of adult social care. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said, the Chancellor was previously—by happy chance—
Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, and that Committee produced a number of reports setting out the need for an additional £7 billion a year for social care. I note that the hon. Gentleman has just doubled that to £14 billion.
I am sure that the figure will rise, not fall; we have only to look at the demographics of the over-65s. Regardless of the rising number of working-age people who require social care of one form or another, if the same sort of percentage of over-65s end up requiring care, the bill will go up by something like 80% over the next 15 years. It is certainly true that demands on the social care budget will rise rather than fall in the coming years.