I agree with my hon. Friend and I raised that with the Minister in a Westminster Hall debate. The Care Bill does not address the role that the Department for Work and Pensions plays in supporting social care through the benefit system and the independent living fund is a classic example of that. At present, people who can pay for social care through access to the ILF do not know quite what is happening, because the Minister—as I think he said last week at the all-party group—is still considering his options.
I want to echo a comment by the hon. Member for Bradford East—I can assure him that he will not get so many mentions in any of my speeches again. He pointed to something that I think is often missed, which is that the debate often crystallises around the spend, which is not seen as an investment. I acknowledge the work done by Scope, and carried out by Deloitte, highlighting that for every £1 invested in care for disabled people with moderate needs a saving of £1.30 is generated. The figures
are pretty staggering. There would be a £700 million saving to central Government through an increase in tax revenue and a reduction in welfare spending. This Government always tell us that they want to reduce welfare spending; well, there are opportunities to do so without doing some of the things that they are doing. There would be a £570 million saving to the NHS and local government, and £480 million would be saved by local government by avoiding the need for disabled people to enter expensive residential and crisis care.
The Minister knows that there is considerable political and organisational support for a lower eligibility threshold. The draft Care and Support Bill pre-legislative scrutiny Committee recommended that, when setting the national eligibility threshold, the Secretary of State should have regard to the duty of local authorities to promote individual well-being. The report of the joint inquiry I have mentioned also highlighted the issue of eligibility.
We in this House often talk as though we are somehow divorced from the beneficiaries of the legislation we pass, but I say to Members that we are talking about ourselves here. Any one of us could walk out of this Chamber tonight and be in need of social care tomorrow. If we want a good social care system, we should ask ourselves this question: what would we want for ourselves if we had a stroke or a car accident or fell down those marvellous marble stairs outside and cracked our head? That is the criteria that we should be using. This Bill makes small progress, but there is a lot more to be done.
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