I rise to support this amendment as I think the House would expect me to because I put forward a similar amendment during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill.
So here we are again. Time rolls on. I want to refer to the annual report I wrote in 2008-09 about the job I had as the Voice of Older People. I wrote that the job had proved a bombshell. Within hours of the announcement being made responses began. Letters, encounters, meetings and seminars showed me the range of cares particular to older people. At that time equality was my agenda and the issues were about the promotion of things such as equality in retirement, pensions and equal pay. However, concerns rapidly expanded. In no time at all I was being inundated with dilemmas about care homes, housing, rent levels and public loos. Expatriates were writing to me about claiming their pensions. End-of-life treatment was on the agenda again.
This agenda has not gone away. It is growing and it will go on doing so. We will hear tomorrow about the implications of the demographic and right now we are awaiting the ramifications of the Dilnot report. There is a campaign to get older people online, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. There are concerns about fuel prices. I have recently read that E.ON, with which I have a special deal for a limited price because I am old, is withdrawing that favour from older people. Why? Breast cancer is very much on the agenda for older people. The risk improves the older you get but it does not reduce after 70 or 75. It goes on being a killer and becomes more seriously so.
Which Bill that will come before the House can encompass this vast agenda of the entire population that is growing old? This is a very difficult problem for the matter of law. We need a commissioner who can embrace housing, pensions, health, welfare and money. We need someone who can listen. The main thing about a commissioner is that they are not the spokesman for the established government—they are about us. They speak to government about what it is we want, what it is we would like, and on what we need guidance. The agenda is huge.
I am well aware that there is a multitude of charitable organisations that deal with all sorts of this fragmented agenda. I pay particular tribute to Age UK which is very, very strong in dealing with these issues, but what we need is for our complaints to be funnelled through an individual who belongs on the side of the old, who addresses the rest of the community about all these issues. I know that the Minister knows that the agenda is a wide one. What we need to know is where we can place this need—on which Bill and in which House? I support the amendment.