Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment in my name and those of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Murphy. In doing so, I remind the House that I am the honorary president of SOLLA, the Society of Later Life Advisers. The amendment would insert into the Bill a commencement date and make sure that that date is carried first by an affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. It mirrors an amendment moved in another place with the support of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. Also, if I may put it this way, it represents a belt to go with the braces of the noble Lord, Lord Best, in ensuring that before the Bill is put into effect we have bottomed out the many open issues we are left with after all the hours this House has spent debating it. As was pointed out in another place, there is nothing to stop the Government introducing that commencement order tomorrow if they so wish. However, I accept that in practice there will not be a commencement order until after a general election—indeed, that is part of its purpose. This means a short delay, no more and no less. I want to emphasise one point. There has been a suggestion that the amendments tabled by some of us are designed to wreck the Bill. This is a terrible calumny. Delaying is not stopping. I am not a supporter of the Bill and the policy behind it, but if I were I would want delay too: I would want my Bill put in the best possible order before I shoved it into effect. Nothing will be served for the Government if this results in administrative chaos or such a burden to finances that it has to be withdrawn again. These amendments are not unhelpful to the Government, even though that is not necessarily the only reason we move them. They are not wrecking amendments. The only thing they wreck is the attempt to force the Bill through as if it were an emergency measure, short-cutting parliamentary procedures, ignoring the criticism of its provisions which has dominated public discussion and without thinking through the fine detail as it needs to be thought through. If ever proof of what I am saying were needed, it came in the report from the Commons Health Select Committee, published last Friday. Not all of your Lordships will have had the opportunity to study that report, but I hope you can take it from me and others who have that it is an Exocet into the heart of this policy. Its conclusions refer to, "policy-making on the hoof", "piecemeal reform", "perverse incentives", "unintended consequences" and underfunding which, ""could be detrimental to the long-term interests of NHS patients"." That is not a contribution to the Conservatives’ election manifesto; it is based on evidence from a committee of the House of Commons, with a majority of Labour members, on the eve of a general election. This is the verdict of the Government’s loyal supporters—Labour, as I am, to the roots—so let us not think that this is some ideological cross-party issue; it is what the Select Committee said. Your Lordships have a duty to ensure that the Government properly consider and respond to that report and its criticisms before the Bill is rushed into law. The second thing to be resolved is the administrative difficulties. I will not repeat all that the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. Thirdly, there is the controversy over costs, although I will not go into the detail of this either, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will do so when he moves his amendment. I will, however, quote SOLLA, which I mentioned earlier, because I do not think that a single outside authority or anyone else, other than the Government, believes that these assessments of costs are realistic. They were shoved out in a few hours after the Prime Minister’s speech, and they have been defended as though they were genuine and serious assessments of costs. SOLLA said that the costing is "at best only approximate", and it cites the view of most experts—and SOLLA’s members are experts—that they are severely underestimated. We cannot let this Bill go through when we do not have the faintest clue how the expenditure that it mandates will be funded. I have great sympathy for the Minister. She is a gallant and much loved Minister in this House, and she is working with hopelessly overburdened officials to an impossible timetable that has been dictated to them by No. 10. No. 10 can dictate to Ministers and to their officials, but it cannot dictate to this House, and it is our duty to make and accept the case for a steadier timetable. My argument for a steadier timetable would apply even if there was no election and even if it was true—and it is far from true—that the Government’s policy attracted the support of all the parties in this Parliament in a spirit of consensus. Of course, an election is imminent and the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have set out quite different approaches to this problem from the Government’s approach. I am not going to adjudicate between them, save only to say that there has been some very unfortunate political toing and froing on this. I look forward, after the election, to returning to the spirit of consensus that should inform our debates on these issues and to getting a consensus solution that will last not for the month to the general election, or for the year that follows it, but for years and decades to come to give our older people the certainty that they require. The Government have proceeded throughout as though this was emergency legislation. The policy itself was announced in the Prime Minister’s conference speech in the midst of a government consultation that had explicitly ruled out the policy that it encapsulates. It was examined in detail in the Commons in a single day, and had its Committee stage in your Lordships’ House before the Government had completed their consultation on the regulations. The Government have not yet produced their White Paper—this is the most serious lacuna of all—setting out their policy for a comprehensive reform of long-term care, towards which they repeatedly claim the Bill is an interim step. It would be a grave mistake to pass this legislation without seeing the full plan for the architecture. I accept that I have a certain strength of feeling about this, but this is not just my view; those two calm heads and former Cabinet Secretaries, the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord Butler, have used quite exceptionally severe words when speaking about it. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, told the Committee of this House that this Bill, which commits a future Government to huge expenditure, was, ""an act of national sabotage".—[Official Report, 22/2/10; col. 893.]" I wonder whether he ever put that into Cabinet minutes. These are strong words. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, said that the Bill was, ""so badly constructed, so poorly costed and so weakly scrutinised that",—[Official Report, 1/2/10; col. 68.]" we should not let it through. Cabinet Secretaries do not use their words lightly, and those are words that the whole House should weigh in its consideration this afternoon. It is now 38 long years since I first started work in and around Westminster, and in that time Governments have done some pretty disgraceful things and Parliament has passed some pretty bad Bills. But, rack my memory as I will, I cannot recall in my lifetime an example of a piece of legislation which has so completely caused a British Government to ignore the precepts of good governance. Never mind the policy: look at the way it has been done and let your Lordships put that right. Fortunately, we exist in our constitution for one very specific purpose: as a backstop against constitutional abuse. Today, I hope we will carry this amendment, as we carried the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and as I trust we will carry others. That will at least gives pause to this headlong rush into half-baked legislation. Resolving the problem will be a matter for incoming Ministers with an up-to-date mandate from those who should ultimately decide these things—the people of this country.