Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the economic contribution of unpaid carers to the UK economy.

Ahead of the forthcoming social care Green Paper on care and support for older people publication, the Department will shortly be publishing its action plan on carers, setting out a cross-Government programme of targeted work to support carers over the next two years.

The action plan will put a focus on delivery ahead of the Green Paper and give visibility to the work that is being done or is planned within Government.

The Department wants to make sure that the strategic issues facing carers are at the heart of proposals on social care, and will therefore be considering these questions as part of the Green Paper rather than through a separate national carers strategy.

In terms of the economic contribution of unpaid carers to the United Kingdom economy, no substantive assessment has been made. Estimates of the value of informal care (or unpaid carers) are frequently based on the cost of providing formal social care services as a direct substitute for informal care, and range widely.