Disabled Persons (Independent Living) Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, is nothing if not tenacious. To bring this Bill back so quickly and to bring it back when it gets a chance to be properly aired and discussed in Parliament is a very important act. I extend my congratulations to those who have been helping the noble Lord and assisting him behind the scenes, including the Disability Rights Commission—and Caroline Ellis will probably be almost as red as the Benches, she has been thanked so much. The Bill is a coherent and sensible approach to getting these issues together. However, what struck me when I looked through it was that there was nothing new here. Virtually every single clause has been debated in the past five or 10 years in Parliament. I appreciate the timely reminder of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that we must get the Bill right technically; she does an important service to this House by saying that. But every part of the Bill has been discussed at least once, if not dozens of times, and if best practice and encouragement worked, we would not be here. That is probably the historical lesson to draw from this. If a voluntary approach is to work, it must be given considerably more push from government. That refers to government as a whole, not to a particular party. The amount of pushing required to get previous Conservative Governments to do work on this matter was also quite monumental at times. I know that every step of the process will get slightly easier as the weight of time and precedent comes behind it, but we still have to push pretty hard. I hope that the people at the top of government—the politicians in charge at the moment—realise that they must take the whole machine, bang heads together and get people to co-operate. If it requires a Bill to do that, a Bill should be introduced. To bring in a little bit of politics, although it is unusual in these events, perhaps we could do without another couple of Home Office Bills, which all seem to do exactly the same thing as the Bills from seven or eight years ago. Possibly then we might get a bit more room for these types of measures. I leave that one sitting as the elephant in the room—but we must ensure that we give enough time and effort to this Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, is gaining a worrying reputation as a rising star in this Chamber. She put her finger on a very important matter when she pointed out that blatant self-interest was involved in this for all of us. We must get this right, because it will affect all of us, directly or indirectly, given the ageing profile of the population and the fact that more people with disabilities live longer. Noble Lords have alluded briefly to the issue of costs. At the moment, what happens is that by not doing X or Y we pay double for Z later. I am sorry for pausing—a dyslexic should never use the alphabet in his examples! By not meeting immediate costs and maintenance, you end up with a damned great repair bill later. That is effectively what is happening. Provisions for disabled people are being squeezed because they can be. Because there is not the legislative priority behind them, of course they are pushed aside. They may be brought back under other initiatives, but then they are pushed aside again. They will always be under that pressure until we get something that ensures that we tackle immediate needs head-on. In education debates, we have looked at the situation for those with disabilities or special educational needs and it has been established that we must have something that guarantees that the problem will be dealt with up front, in legal terms. We are rapidly approaching that situation here, because we are not addressing the problems. We would not be here again today if we had addressed those problems on previous occasions. I have a technical question for the Minister. Is there one aspect of the Bill that is not covered by some form of voluntary guidance? The question might be a little unfair, but we should discuss it in Committee. If we do, we can start to look at how far the Government’s thinking has developed at least on what should happen. Could we also have a little guidance on how fully the cost implications of the Bill have been considered? What potential savings have been identified in the government think tank? Expense will probably be the last defence offered against implementing the provisions. I do not agree, as I said, but it would be helpful to know the Government’s thinking. I have made one or two notes and thought about raising other issues, but I shall instead finish by saying a few words about what will happen if we do not get this or similar legislation very soon. We will have to return to the issue again and again. The noble Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Carter, who are not in their places and are missed, have between them been thumping away on this for decades. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said, even if they are not here, others will pick up the bat and press on. Can the Minister please give us some idea how the Government intend to introduce a process, or a line of thought, to ensure that all these bits of best practice are referred to in guidance—the sop offered in so many discussions in Parliament—and introduced? If we do not get such assurance or a plan to work to, we will have to return with further Bills. Should we have to do that? We are not going to go away. We know that the Government will have to give in and give us something. Why not do it quickly so that we can all go on and do something else?