Welfare Reform Bill

Before I speak to the amendment, I should inform the Committee that, due to weather conditions and my asthma, the usual channels have allowed my noble friend Lady Wilkins to assist me should I not quite get through all the amendments. She will be my voice. This is a pilot and we will see how it goes. I begin by declaring two interests. First, I have the privilege of being the chair of the right to control working group, so all these amendments on the right to control are very close to my heart. I have been working very happily for 18 months with the Department for Work and Pensions on the design and the architecture of this new and very exciting principle. Much of it, I am delighted to say, has found itself being put into the Bill, although there are a few tweaks still to be made. I also declare that I am a long-term user of social care services and direct payments in the UK. The purpose of the amendment is very simple. It is to remove the exclusion of community care services from Clause 31. Ministers have been very clear that the right-to-control trailblazers are intended to ensure that different funding streams can effectively be aligned and integrated. This is to ensure an end to fragmentation and the successful operation of individual budgets. At last, our lives are going to be won. Therefore, I am naturally disappointed that health and social care funding was actively excluded from the legal framework for a right to control in the Bill. None of the explanations or assurances that I have heard to date has served to allay my concerns, and thus I feel that I have no option but to raise this issue in Committee. First, perhaps I may explain why it is vital that community care funding is included in the right to control framework, and transparently so. Noble Lords will know that today disabled people face a very fragmented system that demands that we negotiate as many as six different funding agencies, with their different criteria, to secure a basic support package to enable us just to get up in the morning and live our daily lives. That is a job in itself before you begin your life. The whole point of a right to control is to put us in charge of all the resources to which we are entitled. Therefore, the Bill rightly includes—this I am very happy about—a dazzling array of funding streams connected with further and higher education, training, securing and retaining employment, enabling independent living in the community and overcoming barriers to participation. We then exclude one of the most significant funding streams for those of us with what are referred to as high support needs—that is, people just like me. For those of us who are entitled to social care support, it is vital that the right to control provides the means for us to access those resources seamlessly and incorporate them in our individual budgets; otherwise we will be at a huge disadvantage. This should not be left to chance, good will or a "we will all work together later on down the line" attitude. If the right to control is to be effective in freeing disabled people from dependency and bureaucracy, it must be clear from the start that this fundamental, important public support service is included. I understand that Ministers have suggested that they want to avoid duplicating existing social care legislation and that somehow this right to control would override all the good work within the Department of Health. That is baffling. Not only do I know the Department of Health funding streams backwards, I know that there is no social care legislation that talks about the right to control which does not have this exciting architecture that we have been developing. Nor does the legislation require local authorities to ensure that social care funding is pooled in an individual budget. If Ministers and noble Lords consider that direct payments regulations suffice, then they really must think again. Direct payments regulations do not provide the legislative basis for self-directed support or individual budgets in the way that a right to control will do in future. Local authorities who have implemented something akin to the right to control in social care have been unable to use those regulations. Instead, they have had to rely on powers of well-being in other legislation, which I have found not fit for purpose. Ministers have also suggested that there are powers in other legislation requiring local authorities to co-operate with the right to control system, but we have been given no details. What disabled people see when they look at this Bill is a gigantic hole at its heart, which makes nonsense of assurances of alignment and raises fears of continued fragmentation. To rebuild trust in politics, legislation must say what it means. Social care is either included in the right to control or it is not. The White Paper and Ministers say one thing and the Bill says another, which is not an acceptable state of affairs. After all, we are looking for better legislation and regulation. It is not just me who is uppity about this. Along with RADAR and fellow members of the Disability Benefits Consortium, I have sought the view of one of our leading community care lawyers, Luke Clements. He advises that the exclusions are totally unnecessary and that there is good cause to seek to remove them. I have spoken to Department of Health lawyers who have said something else. Put 10 lawyers in the room and you will probably get 10 different answers. David Stocks, a user of mental health services, was recently speaking alongside me at the launch of the current right to control consultation. It was a hot potato that was being discussed. He said: ""What disabled people want from this policy"—" the new legislation— ""is a one-stop shop for empowerment, seize this moment"." For goodness’ sake, we should look at this together and seize this moment. I beg to move.