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Written question asked by Jim Cunningham (Labour) on Tuesday, 10 November 2015, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 16 November 2015 (named day). It was answered by Alistair Burt (Conservative) on Monday, 16 November 2015 on behalf of the Department of Health.


Carers

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 9 November 2015 to Question 14774, what data his Department holds on the number of voluntary carers in the UK; and if he will make a statement.

Answer

We take voluntary in this context to mean informal unpaid carers – those volunteering to care in a formal capacity are not included in these statistics which are set out below.


Data on provision of unpaid care from the 2011 Census was published by Office of National Statistics (ONS) on 11 December 2012. This showed that there were 6.5 million carers in the United Kingdom.


On 15 February 2013, the ONS published an article with the results of further analysis of the data, which shows that the overall number of unpaid carers in England and Wales has grown by 600,000 since the 2001 Census (approximately 5.8 million people, representing just over 10% of the population).




Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
16045
Session
2015-16
Related items
Carers
Monday, 9 November 2015
Written questions
House of Commons
Subjects
Carers
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk