Personal Care at Home Bill

I shall speak briefly to Amendments 26 and 28 standing in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. Amendment 28 is simple: it would replace "maximise" with "improve". "Maximise" is the sort of word that should not appear in legislation; it suggests that we should do this whatever the cost, even if it is infinite, which in some cases it could be. "Improve" would be perfectly valid in this context and it would improve the legislation. Amendment 26, which is the more important of the pair, is very much a probing amendment, as I want to explore the Government’s thinking. Everybody is in favour of re-enablement. There is no question but that it is a good thing—the more it can be done successfully, the better. However, the Bill is drafted in such a way that, if an elderly person is not willing to accept a programme for re-enablement, their free personal care can be withdrawn. That kind of thing is quite common in social policy these days, in the same way that if an unemployed person refuses to take a job their allowance can be withdrawn. That is not always wrong, but I am a bit concerned about what this might mean in practice. Re-enablement may not be an easy process for the person undergoing it. Physiotherapy can be painful to anybody of any age, but for someone in later life it may be difficult to tolerate. I do not like the idea that a local authority can say, "You get on and do your exercises, Mrs Jones, or we’ll take away your free personal care". That is not the kind of relationship that should exist as a result of such legislation. What guidance will the Government offer to prevent this from being used as a heavy-handed tool to bully old people into doing things that may be on the edge of or beyond what they are capable of, rather than as a tool for encouragement and mutual working together?