Personal Care at Home Bill

I take the noble Baroness’s point and recognise that she is much more expert on that issue, through her work and experience, than I am. I turn to the specific amendments. They seek to give powers to the Secretary of State to require local authorities to charge for personal care at a set rate. I accept that the noble Earl is testing whether that would be a preferred system. This would mean that a centrally set figure would be decided upon and an amount of personal care would not be provided free of charge, but rather would be charged at a prescribed or preferential rate. Any personal care requirements beyond this set figure would then be free of charge. Clearly, this proposed amendment is not in line with the purpose of the Bill. The Bill aims to provide free personal care at home to those with the highest needs, providing freedom from worry that they will be unable to meet the costs of their vital personal care. Should local authorities be able to charge for elements of care at a prescribed rate, it would continue, we believe, to add worry and distress to those who have the highest levels of personal care. They would be in fear of a bill landing at the door, as is indeed the case in the current system. We are content with our estimates for the funding of this policy. We therefore believe that these amendments are unnecessary and would resist Amendments 5, 6, 14, 16 and 27. Amendment 40 would broaden the regulation-making power under Section 15(5)(a) so as to expressly say that not only would regulations make different provision for different prescriptions of qualifying services; they could also make a different provision for different circumstances. We do not believe that this amendment adds anything of substance, because Section 15 already gives the Secretary of State power to make a different provision for different qualifying services. Coupled with other existing powers to prescribe circumstances in which services would be provided free, we therefore already have the power to prescribe different circumstances in which different qualifying services are to be provided free. I therefore ask the noble Earl and the noble Baroness not to press these amendments.