Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, not surprisingly, many of us had anticipated that as we probed into the details of the Bill we would find ourselves in a bit of a quagmire. It is quite a small Bill and quite a small area of quagmire, but my impression is that the depth is considerable and one gets out of one’s depth very quickly. However, I want to support Amendment 29 put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. I supported the principle of this at Second Reading and I have seen no reason to change my mind. Here, there is at least one bit of hard ground on which we can walk where there could be a significant benefit from legislation that we might advance this afternoon. The benefit would be in three contexts. One is the individual. By and large, people who need substantial care packages do not move for frivolous reasons. If they are moving from one authority to another, there will probably be a good reason, normally to do with folks who are relatives and potentially informal carers. The benefit there is clear and significant. However, there will also be a benefit to the local authorities involved. If someone with substantial care needs comes into a new area and has to be reassessed completely, that will involve significant time and the cost of their assessment, including professional time. One can be fairly sure that if significant capital costs are involved—which may well be the case, and that is a legitimate point to query—the move will, by and large, not be for frivolous reasons and there will not be a large number of people to whom this applies. They would not be moving if the capital costs were likely to be great, because the care needs would be equally great. The move would be for good reason. Thirdly—this point has been made—some of us believe that one of the more important features of the Bill is that it moves towards a national care service, involving a degree of equity between different postcode areas and local authorities. That would be one way of establishing equity in a very specific way. Costs borne by a new authority are running costs—I accept not capital costs—lost by another authority. Surely it would not be beyond our powers of intelligence to devise a way of transferring money if the costs were significant and substantial. I support the amendment.