Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, I warmly support all that has been said in support of this amendment by its other movers. No one who has spoken to local government as I have can possibly be in any doubt of the appalling predicament in which many councils now find themselves as they face the prospect of having to implement this Bill. Not only do they not know where the money will come from, they do not even know how much money, ultimately, they are likely to have to find. They also argue, as I do and as the noble Lord, Lord Best, does, that this scheme is a new burden and therefore constitutes a blatant breach of the Government’s own undertaking to local government not to impose such burdens. In Committee, the Minister made light of these concerns. She seemed to be saying that there was plenty of money around and that it could be found from efficiency savings if people would only put their minds to it. She also dismissed the idea that the policy represented a new burden. It is important to expose those arguments for the nonsense they are. New burdens are new tasks imposed on local government which are not fully funded. Free personal care at home is a new task imposed on local government and will be only partly funded. It is not any use the Minister saying, as she did in Committee, that the 4 per cent efficiency savings which councils have to make next year leave plenty of room to meet the costs of the scheme. The term "efficiency savings" means that you take money away from a local authority’s spending total without damaging the services that are provided. Local authorities are therefore being asked by the Minister to spend money which, by definition, they do not have. It seems to me that that is a curious sort of sophistry. It may be that the line the Minister meant to give was that given by her colleague, John Denham, in another place, who indicated that the efficiency savings required were to be over and above the already budgeted 4 per cent savings. We need to be clear how unrealistic that is. In many local authorities, it is impossible as of today to identify where such additional savings might come from. It is true that some local authorities will need to find comparatively small sums, but others will be landed with an instant and very large bill—I refer to those local authorities where a high proportion of those who are currently receiving personal care are funding that care themselves. It is irresponsible for Ministers to dismiss the acute funding problems that those councils are facing at a time when they have already finalised their budgets and the council tax for next year. I believe that it is the Government’s responsibility and ours in this Chamber to recognise practical reality and to back this amendment.