One of the country’s leading insurance companies fears that Britain is heading for a ‘crisis’ in long term care.

Scottish Widows issued a stark warning that it would take “four or five years” for the problem to become big enough and attract enough media attention to force political action.

Speaking at the launch of the Scottish Widows Retirement Report, chief executive Toby Strauss said: “I think long-term care is going to become a bigger and bigger issue.

“We are going to end in this crisis around long-term care and lack of funding for it and some inequalities; people who haven’t saved and are being funded by the state, people who’ve saved a bit and have to pay for it – if that isn’t going to get ironed out it will become very politically charged.

“It may be one of these topics like Auto Enrolment where a consensus can be got to across the political parties because it’s very hard for just one party to drive this through.”

Strauss concluded by suggesting that having a fair and equal nationwide system of funding for long-term care was crucial to solving the problem.