Welfare Reform Bill

I thank the noble Baroness for this amendment and all noble Lords who have spoken. We have had some interesting contributions and some real-life and challenging experiences. I note that the amendment has support right around the Committee, from the noble Lords, Lord Skelmersdale and Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell and Lady Wilkins, to my noble friends Lady Turner and Lady Hollis. I think that everyone who has spoken—nearly everyone who is here—has supported it. This amendment would enable the Government to regulate for the provision of assistance with direct payments by voluntary organisations. I acknowledge the point—which is implicit in the amendment and has been spoken to powerfully by a number of noble Lords—that the availability of advice and brokerage services will be very important to the success of the trailblazers. Before turning to the amendment text itself, I would like to acknowledge that the voluntary sector can and does play a key role in delivering personalisation and achieving independent living for disabled people. The 2005 report Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People stressed the need to improve the availability of advice and advocacy services for disabled people. That report put a particular emphasis on the role of organisations that are led and controlled by disabled people. It set out a commitment that by 2010 there should be a user-led organisation—ULO—in every locality in England. We have brought in several measures to help us work towards this target. The Department of Health has invested £1.65 million in a ULO development fund. The Office for Disability Issues has recently committed a further £700,000 to provide additional support to developing ULOs. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked me directly about progress towards our target on that. As well as the funding that I have just mentioned, we believe that for 2009-10, the current year, a key priority is to develop the capacity and capability of existing ULOs to support the development of ULOs where none currently exists. Deputy regional directors for social care and partnerships—DRDs—in the nine regions will be taking forward the lessons learnt from the action and learning sites and developing plans towards meeting recommendations in their own regions. We have commissioned further mapping to identify further progress and it will be used to inform the regional development work. We will work with the DRDs to measure the progress towards the objective of a ULO in every activity. In short, we are not there yet but there is progress. Voluntary organisations are not the sole providers of support and the trailblazers will explore a range of options. For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, acknowledged, the Department of Health-led individual budgets pilots found that many people chose to involve their family and friends in deciding how to spend their budget. The trailblazer design should preserve flexibility to explore other options that people put forward. Our commitment to a co-production approach has been broadly welcomed, and I intend to preserve the framework that will deliver on that commitment. Therefore, while I support the spirit of this amendment, I cannot accept it. The amendment focuses specifically on the voluntary sector and on assistance in connection with direct payments. This captures only a small part of the types of assistance disabled people might require and the ways in which they might choose to receive assistance. Although the amendment is not prescriptive in the noble Baroness’s terms and would not prevent the Government making regulations relating to other types of assistance, it could suggest that other sources of support would not have the same emphasis. I do not think that the voluntary sector should carry the burden of being the sole support provider, and we should avoid suggesting that that is the case. Neither do I see the right to control as simply a system of direct payments; the Government want to see support being made widely available in the context of the right to control, not being confined to assistance with making direct payments. I have set out some of the existing arrangements for support, which we shall explore in the trailblazers, when we can look at other options. The Bill gives us sufficient power to return to this in regulations, if necessary, so we do not need it set in the Bill. However, at this time I do not want to signal any intention to constrain our valuable co-productive approach. Accordingly, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.