Welfare Reform Bill

The structure of the Bill sets out the types of services and funding streams that would be envisaged in the trailblazers. We have debated why community care services are excluded. It is not that they should be excluded from being involved in the right to control arrangements; it is simply that the legislation is dealt with elsewhere. There has been a debate about whether that is the appropriate formulation that we should accept, but I do not think that anybody is saying that community care services are excluded from this new and innovative approach of giving the disabled the right to control the services that are available to them. The precise funding streams for the services that will be included will have to be developed in relation to, and under, the trailblazers to test how they work and what can be made to work. That would clearly include local authority services.