Welfare Reform Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, started with what I can only describe as a devastating critique of joined-up government in the area of services for disabled people, and of course she is absolutely right. The Bill holds out absolutely no help to us at all. In England, there is to be excluded: community care services, Carers and Disabled Children Act services and services under the Children Act. In Scotland, there is to be excluded: community care services and services provided under Section 22(1) of the Children (Scotland) Act. That does not smack of what the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, said was better legislation. If anything, it is a step backwards, and that is not what one wants. So I, too, add my support to the noble Baroness’s amendment, which leaves out the exclusion of community care services from the services that a disabled person will have the right to control; broadly speaking, the provision of carers, or accommodation, or support which is currently mainly provided by local authorities—or so we are told. But it ain’t so, is it? I have the figures with me, but I am sure that other Members of the Committee will know that even though personalised budgets have been available for several years in the social services field, the take-up has been deplorable. It has been miniscule—I believe less than 1 per cent. However, I shall not go on about that. This exclusion of services provided by local authorities seems rather short-sighted. Social care will be one of the significant areas, important in enabling the disabled person to achieve almost any of those matters. The services that most disabled people will draw on to some extent at least will not be subject to direct control and, as a result, any claims by the Government that they are delivering a fully flexible and modern system sounds distinctly hollow. It is a great shame, as the Government had looked—as has been pointed out—as though they might have been prepared to do something brave and far-reaching, which could not only transform the lives of those who would now be in control of directing their own care but engender a new way of looking at how welfare in the widest sense is dispersed. Let us look at some of the history of these proposals. It looked as if the Government would be persuaded by the arguments put to them. The Green Paper, No one Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility, which contained proposals to reform the welfare system, was published for consultation in July 2008. It also proposed to explore rolling out individual budgets for disabled people, should earlier pilots prove successful. Chapter 5 of the Green Paper, "Delivering choice and control for disabled people", posed the following question for consultation in respect of individual budgets, which included the statement: ""We are interested in exploring how disabled people might receive a reliable and equitable service when requesting choice and control of the funds used to meet their needs, and whether public authorities could be expected not to unreasonably refuse such a request"." A selection of the responses to the consultation paper was set out in appendix A of the subsequent White Paper, Raising Expectations and Increasing Support: Reforming Welfare for the Future. It revealed that the majority of respondents, including the Scottish Government and many of the stakeholders and charities which have been briefing noble Lords, were supportive of giving disabled people greater choice and control over services. The responses were overwhelmingly in favour of direct control. However, I fear that having raised the expectations of disabled people the Government are prepared to dash them with what I can only describe as the timidity of Clause 31. I have in common with other noble Lords concerns over the scope of the right to control as it is envisaged by the Government and which funding streams will be included in that right. Amendment 162, which is equivalent to an amendment tabled in another place by my honourable friend Mark Harper, includes community care budgets and social care service payments within the scope of DWP direct payments. In his response to our amendment, I should be interested to hear from the Minister why certain funding streams have been excluded. As well as diluting control for disabled people, the continuance of separate funding streams creates unnecessary complication and bureaucracy for a system intended to be user-focused. By adopting our approach, we would combine funding streams that would enable people with a disability to purchase—that dreaded word—holistic services, and support, and ensure consistency of approach. In addition, I fear that the confusion caused by multiple funding streams will have a detrimental effect on take-up and may even impact on the quality of services. In persisting in keeping community care services separate, the Government appear to be more concerned with promoting departmental points of view, allowing different departments to hang on jealously to their pots of money instead of combining for a common purpose, rather than that of a disabled person. We should have one common framework for assessing all services—and, potentially, we should put together all the funding streams and resources so that they can be directed in a way that suits requirements. I urge the Minister to bear in mind a point made in the other place—that we have the luxury of testing this with a pilot scheme before rolling the scheme out nationally. If he acceded to the amendment, he would be pleasantly surprised by the outcome of those pilots. I most strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell.