A Commons health select committee report into social care urges the government to integrate health, housing and social services to address the challenges of an ever-increasing elderly population.

Its recommendations come before the publication of the government's social care white paper.

MPs argued that joining up services as well as integrating commissioning would make it easier to move money around the local health, housing and social care system as well as help deliver "efficiency savings" within the NHS.

Labour MP Grahame Morris reminded the committee that it is also urging the government to recognise the "widening funding gap" in social care services between the number of those who need care and the amount of money in the system.

He said: "With many of us getting older these care needs are going to continue increasing all the time."

Mr Morris also lashed out at the reform proposals in the Health & Social Care Bill which he argued will only increase problems of fragmentation and underfunding.

Conservative committee chairman Stephen Dorrell said the report's recommendations aim to "avoid a system that has run out of money."

The National Pensioners Convention (NPC) said the report proved that social care is in need of a "radical overhaul" and that the government will need to go much further if it is to address the serious failings in the current system.

"The problem with our social care system is that it is the Cinderella of the welfare state - experiencing years of underfunding, rationing and poor standards," said NPC general secretary Dot Gibson.

"Nearly one million older people are denied any assistance at all, many are still forced to sell their homes in order to pay for care and the cost and quality of some treatment is shocking."

She urged the government to set up a National Care Service that will cut out any fragmentation by offering a comprehensive system of care for vulnerable pensioners funded through general taxation.

Conservative MP Dr Daniel Poulter added: "Hospital admissions are going up and the majority of them are frail and elderly.

"Every year there is an increasing number of families in crisis because of the revolving door of discharge and readmission to hospital."

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