According to Imelda Redmond CBE, Chief Executive, Carers UK: "More people are living longer and living longer with disability, and more people are now entering retirement than are coming into the labour market. This leaves fewer people to pay two potentially huge bills – the costs of pensions and the costs of care. By 2017 we will have reached the tipping point of care where the numbers of older people needing care will outstrip the numbers of carers available to provide care.

These are two of the most serious issues we will ever face, every bit as serious as climate change and economic recession. We now accept that we will have to work longer if we are to meet the costs of pensions and not leave our children with an unmanageable tax burden. But what about care in people’s own homes and the people who provide care, unpaid? Caring is too often seen as a private matter and it needs to become a prominent public issue.

This manifesto is part of the new social contract that Carers UK is proposing. It sets out a blueprint for the next government to achieve real and lasting change for carers and their families. Recession is not an excuse for inactivity – it’s time to support carers. There is much that can and must be achieved for hard-pressed families in the UK.

There are six million carers throughout the UK, or one in eight adults providing care to disabled, frail, or chronically ill family and friends, unpaid. This care has been valued at around £87 billion – the equivalent of a second NHS. Around 2 million people start caring every year and a similar proportion stop. There are around 180,000 children under the age of 16 with a caring responsibility.

"It makes economic sense to target additional government spending on carers. The next five years will see an austere time for government as public spending will be scrutinized both nationally and locally to reduce the public deficit."