Personal Care at Home Bill

I wish to speak to Amendment 29 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. It is right that people should have portable rights, but a valid point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, about capital costs. When someone dies, it is deplorable if all the wonderful appliances that have been put into a property are wasted. A neighbour had a stairlift for only two or three months. When she died, the executors were advised by the selling agents for her property, "Take out everything that could possibly look as if someone disabled lived here if you want to get the best price". The executors tried to get rid of the lift. No council or anyone else would take it or reuse it anywhere else. In the end, the executors managed to sell the lift back to the providers for about a third, or even a quarter, of what it had cost to install only a matter of months previously. It is important that if a property is adapted for special needs, if at all possible—and it should certainly be possible regarding social housing—that property should be passed on to someone else with special needs. Then the adaptations would not need to be so great and the loss to the council that had made the adaptations would not be so great. As regards portability, apart from anything else, it would be of benefit to the receiving local authority if it had warning that someone who rapidly needed special care was coming. It would certainly reduce the need for reassessment. That is an important point.