A new King’s Fund report, which can find here warns that politicians have turned social care into an “electoral taboo” – despite evidence that the public values the service and supports reform when prompted.

The think tank tracks back on the times when one party or another has raised the subject of reform (and, more specifically, how it can be funded) only to scurry back under the bedcovers when other parties have used it as a stick to beat them with.

With no party now offering any bold reforms, or even mildly imaginative changes for that matter, the subject has retreated from the front pages – and perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Casey Commission has been seemingly scheduled for long-grass territory.

It’s a failure that will severely impact generations to come.

Another crisis in the making is our falling healthy life expectancy. The highly respected Alan Walker takes to the letters pages of The Guardian to point out the economic implications to the nation and lays the blame at the feet of politicians who, he says, have overseen the decline. “The shocking fall of three years for women and two years for men, in just three years, reveals the cumulative impact of the Tory/Liberal Democrat austerity programme and the gross mismanagement of the pandemic.”

There’s just room to squeeze in two other major reports today. The Health Foundation looks in depth at the plight of the nation’s unpaid carers, while a DWP report on Pension Credit has largely slipped the media net but is essential reading.

It highlights how (still) this essential benefit is still not well understood by those whose lives it could help.

That’s all there’s room for today – with several big stories kept over until tomorrow.