Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, this is almost the centre of every debate that we have about how we deliver services. An awful lot of us here have served in both national government and local authorities. There is a perennial tension between, for example, local authorities and the health service. At the end of the day, we must believe in good will. There has been some reference to this being an area where we have to develop consensual politics. Many of us have the same common belief that services delivered locally are a good thing, but nevertheless there has to be intrinsic equity between the delivery of those services. There will be tensions between what we specify nationally and how that is interpreted, but one hopes that in this new world of consensus which I think even the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has promised us, we will be able to solve those problems.