Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of people spending fewer than 35 hours a week caring for someone with substantial caring needs.

The number of informal carers (those who provide help for an adult or child within or outside the household), as recorded in the Family Resources Survey, is 5.6 million. Of these, it is estimated that 71% are providing less than 35 hours care per week. The FRS is known to underestimate the number of carers and the true figure is likely to be higher than this.

Information on the number of those being cared for with ‘substantial care needs’ is not available as it is not possible to identify those individuals and their carers in existing survey or administrative datasets.