More than 25 per cent of the population will be over 65 in 20 years' time, three in four people will need care towards the end of our lives and only one council out of ten has made provision for this growing demographic. Joan Bakewell’s report for Panorama this week showed the good, the bad and the ugliest of scenarios that await us. It was also a timely reminder of the huge challenge that care for the elderly represents in this country.

The coalition government has postponed a decision to the crucial but highly controversial question of how social care is to be funded in future. At present in Scotland personal care is free but the costs are set to double over the next 15 years. In England large numbers of people end up having to sell their homes to pay for their care, which is of course wildly unpopular; but as Panorama pointed out, many of this generation of baby-boomers will be wealthier than the young tax payers who would have to foot the bill if the state picked up all the costs.

Is it fair to expect one generation to pay for the care in old age of their parents and grandparents? By 2060 there will only be two people working for every one retired - an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. Meanwhile those needing care now or over the next few years are faced with paying for their own care, which can cost at least £500 a week, or relying on local authorities whose budgets are subject to draconian cuts.

There is a major issue of fairness at stake here. The solution will not please everyone, but clarity, when it finally comes, will at least ease the serious worries that beset older people as we contemplate how we are going to pay for the care that most of us are going to need. The solution lies probably in a mixed payment - individuals making a contribution to their care costs and the state topping it up. But we will have to wait another year for the government's new Commission to report and in the meantime thousands more will need care under the present muddled and occasionally very unfair system. But as Dame Joan said: "The baby-boomers are not going to sit quietly in the corner and be told to take their tablets."