In London, a substantial majority of the social care workforce is from non-UK countries (How will we care for the centenarians of the future?, 24 May). According to a recent Economic and Social Research Council report: "The reliance on recent migrant care workers is higher in sectors and services with lower pay and lower in the sectors and type of organisations with comparatively higher wages." As it is the private sector that is identified in the report as generally paying their workforce substantially less than the public and voluntary sectors, economies of exploitation spring to mind.
Perhaps local authorities should have borne this in mind when they cavalierly turned over the care of vulnerable older people and other adults to the private sector. It beggars belief that they did not realise that the workforce – mainly vulnerable recent migrants – would be so exploited.
Leon Kreitzman
Chair, Age Concern Lewisham & Southwark
• Danny Dorling raises important issues about demographic imbalances but omits the need to boost the status and value of caring, both formal and informal. We have a care system in crisis now, failing older people and shifting more of the cost and the care on to families.
That's why it's critical that the Dilnot commission's report in July recommends a new way to pay for care that is intergenerationally fair. Using older people's wealth, for example through a care duty on estates, would be a fairer way of paying for better care for our ageing population today and tomorrow.
Stephen Burke
Director, United for All Ages
• Lloyd George's introduction of old-age pensions in 1908 was widely acclaimed as the proto-welfare state, which after the second world war was the Attlee government's triumph. There is no such critical excitement for the future care of the elderly.
We need a Beveridge. Raising pension age, and equalising it at 65 for women, is unpopular, and while Danny Dorling's statistics are favourable on longevity they are not on paying for it. We don't all want, nor can we all afford, to move to Spain. Incentives for having more babies might be well received, but an open-door immigration policy would be less popular than a population cull.
Dr Graham Ullathorne
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
• Danny Dorling does not say where the care workers of the future will come from. Based on current population figures and projections, it looks like African countries will be the main providers. Does he really think this is a the best way to help the development of these countries?
Laurent Bouillot
Sheffield
• Danny Dorling asks who will care for centenarians in 2050, bemoaning the loss of fertility in eastern Europe. No such problem in Turkey. Accession beckons.
Mike Jackson (aged 63)
Watford, Hertfordshire