Welfare Reform Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for giving me the opportunity to explain the purpose and effect of Clause 59 and, I trust, give him the reassurance he seeks. The clause, and regulations to be made under it, will replace the current legislation governing the circumstances in which payment of attendance allowance or the care component of disability living allowance is withdrawn from care home residents. Its purpose is to provide greater clarity to the legislation, not to alter the circumstances under which the benefits are currently withdrawn. Attendance allowance and disability living allowance are paid as a contribution towards the extra costs that severely disabled people may face because of their disability. However, people in care homes have their disability-related needs, except those related to mobility, met entirely by the services provided in the home. Accordingly, to prevent the duplication of provision from public funds, payments of attendance allowance or the care component of disability living allowance are withdrawn after 28 days where the care home accommodation is either provided by a local authority, or the costs of the accommodation are met in full or in part out of public or local funds, under specified legislation. However, the current legislation in this area is confusing both to customers and their advisers for two reasons. First, it does not define what is meant by the ““costs of accommodation””. It is generally accepted that, under the current legislation, the ““costs of accommodation”” include not only the cost of the accommodation and board received in a care home but also the costs ofany personalised care received. The Social Security Commissioners have supported this interpretation whenever it has been challenged. But the fact that this interpretation has been challenged proves that the current legislation is far from transparent to our customers. The second reason for this clause is to provide a more effective and efficient method for updating the references to the ““specified legislation”” under which we define what services are borne out of public or local funds, because references to the legislation are themselves currently in primary legislation. This clause remedies those difficulties in two ways. First, it removes the ambiguity in the meaning of the ““costs of the accommodation”” to make it clear that attendance allowance and the care component of disability living allowance will be withdrawn only where the costs of any ““qualifying services””, as defined, are met from public or local funds. Secondly, it provides regulation-making powers to list the specified legislation in regulations instead of the primary legislation. This will make it easier and quicker to update the statutory references from time to time as required. The noble Lord has rightly raised concerns as to why we have not tied our definition of a care home to either an existing definition, such as that provided in the Care Standards Act 2000, or by reference to an establishment being registered. On the back of this there may be a concern that the changes to the legislation effected by Clause 59 will bring into scope people who are living in non-residential care settings where high levels of care and support are provided for by a local authority—for instance, extra care housing, sheltered accommodation, adult placements and the like. Let me deal with this latter point first as I would like to make it absolutely clear to noble Lords that we have no intention whatever of broadening the scope for removing benefits. I appreciate that concerns may remain, particularly because we intend to provide our definition of ““specified enactments”” in regulations rather than in the Bill. However, I can assure noble Lords that the definitions will clarify but not alter who will and who will have not have payment of their attendance allowance or care component of disability living allowance withdrawn. Those who do not currently have their benefit withdrawn under the existing legislation will not have it withdrawn as a result of this clause and the regulations. Under Clause 59, regulations may provide that attendance allowance or the care component of disability living allowance may be withdrawn if any of the costs of qualifying services are borne out of public or local funds under a specified enactment. Qualifying services include accommodation—the bricks and mortar—board and personal care. The enactment under which housing benefit is payable will not be specified in the regulations and therefore a person will not have the benefit withdrawn by virtue of their using housing benefit to pay for the bricks and mortar of their accommodation. Regulations currently specifically exclude from the costs of accommodation domiciliary services provided in respect of a person in a private dwelling. This enables those in, for example, sheltered accommodation or adult placements whose bricks and mortar accommodation costs are met by housing benefit, as is usually the case, to retain their attendance allowance and the care component of disability living allowance. The regulations under Clause 59 will also ensure that people in such types of accommodation will not have their benefits withdrawn. We intend to include in the new regulations the same exclusion for domiciliary services provided in a private dwelling. This will mean that a person will not have their benefit withdrawn by virtue of receiving board and/or personal care paid for out of public funds under a specified enactment such as the National Assistance Act where such services are domiciliary services provided in their own home, such as they would be in a sheltered accommodation or adult placement environment. To ensure that we get these regulations right, we will be consulting withkey stakeholders such as the Local Government Association, the Department of Health and the devolved administrations on the wording of those regulations to ensure that they properly reflect our intentions and do not unintentionally introduce any anomalies. I turn now to why we choose to tie our definition of a care home either to an existing definition or one based on whether an accommodation is registered. I agree that at first glance, using such a definition seems a sensible idea and indeed we closely examined the merits of defining a care home in the same way as the Care Standards Act 2000 and the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 when drafting Clause 59. However, we decided not to base the definition in this way because the definitions provided by those pieces of legislation do not encapsulate all the institutions which are currently covered, such as children’shomes, adult training centres and accommodation specifically for disabled students. These institutions need to be covered so that attendance allowance or the care component of disability living allowance is properly withdrawn to prevent duplication of funding. Defining a care home in the way we have also allows us to break any link to primary legislation into current definitions which may change in future. I hope that I have covered, perhaps extensively, all the points the noble Lord has raised or might have had an interest in and provided the reassurance he seeks. I beg to move.