Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, I shall speak in favour of the two amendments to which I have appended my name, Amendments 38 and 46. The first of these prescribes that regulations under the Bill should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, not the negative resolution as now, and the other that there should be a commencement date for the Bill, which again would be subject to the affirmative procedure. In moving these amendments, I am delighted to be quite confident that this time the Minister will not be able to say that these are wrecking amendments. They are designed specifically to improve the Bill, and I hope therefore that I shall be more seductive with my arguments on these than I proved to be on the "wreckers". I can be pretty brief because the case for the amendments is self-evident. The Bill is the thinnest of skeleton Bills; it does not in itself do anything except remove the limitation on local authorities. All the substance—the flesh, the bones, the blood, the brains—is to come in the regulations, which are of course out for a consultation that closes tomorrow. It is sad indeed that the House has to consider the Bill today when the consultation on the regulations does not even close until tomorrow, and it is a sign of what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who has participated in this debate, said earlier: that the Bill is being treated as if it were a piece of emergency legislation. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is with us, and it is good to see him. It is quite strange, this; for 10 years he and I, with different solutions in mind, have tried to get long-term care up the policy agenda. We took one step forward sometimes, but usually two steps back. Then, suddenly, as a result of the Prime Minister’s conference speech, it has become a subject so urgent as to require emergency legislation without any of the safeguards that this Parliament and this country’s unwritten constitution usually demand in such cases. It is not often that you get a Bill without a commencement date. It is certainly not often that you get a Bill introduced at this haste without a commencement date. It is never the case that you get a Bill introduced at this haste without a commencement date where the timetable is so flimsy—and where, for the reasons that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, set out so well, it is extremely doubtful that the timetable is even attainable. There is a further argument for a commencement date, which arose earlier in our debates: there is widespread agreement, although it seems harder to turn this into reality, that we need some form of consensus over this. It is no good producing a Bill to last the four weeks until a general election; we want a Bill that will take us forward in policy in this area not over days, months or even years but over decades, because decades are the time horizon for the Bill’s effects. It therefore makes sense for a commencement date to be after a general election. The proposal, which would insert a commencement date to be agreed by affirmative resolution in both Houses, would have that effect. In my judgment, it would not be possible for the Government to get an order of that kind through before an election. Our second proposal is that this be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Frankly, I am astonished that the Government have tried this one on. The argument is that the regulations that are being amended by the Bill were under the negative resolution procedure, and therefore the Bill should be too. That is rather like saying that a home that was fit for a mouse will of course be appropriate for an elephant. The House is clearly required to look at the amendments in detail in full debate and, if they will, agree them. We talk sometimes about Henry VIII powers. On that sort of scale, Henry VIII was an uxorious monogamist in comparison with the Bill, which is simply unsuitable to be taken under the negative procedure. I commend both these amendments to the Committee. I hope that the Minister will accept them today; if not, she may be assured that we will be pursuing them on Report. It will be a much better Bill when we succeed, as I am wholly confident that we will, in inserting both amendments into it at that stage along with other necessary changes.