My Lords, I should have declared on the previous order—and do on this order—my chairmanship of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust and that I am president of GS1 and a consultant and trainer with Cumberlege Connections. I am happy to support this order. I think it is the third time the noble Earl has been before the Committee to present such an order and, as I understand it, it is an interim measure until the Care Bill is enacted; the noble Earl has said that that is expected to be on 1 April 2015.
To pick up the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I suppose it would have been helpful if we could have seen the draft of the final evaluation report at this point—it is now not going to be published until April. The noble Earl referred to some of the main findings of the draft final evaluation report from King’s College. He said that it was mainly positive although there were clearly some issues, which are identified in paragraph 7.6. Perhaps he might like to say a little more about that.
Perhaps I could also ask the noble Earl about right to control. This was considered in the previous order, and in this order a reference is made to the fact that
decisions on the future of the right to control pilot scheme have yet to be made and hence no provisions are included in the new order in this regard. When we debated this on 20 November 2012, the noble Earl referred to the interim evaluation of the right to control programme, published in February 2012, which showed that disabled people were benefiting but there simply was not enough evidence to make a decision on a wider rollout. He went on to say:
“Clearly, an extension of the kind that we seek will give us more evidence. The early signs are positive but that does not provide the basis for a robust decision on permanent arrangements”.—[Official Report, 20/11/2012; col. GC 150.]
Has the department now given this further consideration? Can the noble Earl say why no decisions on the future of right to control have yet been made and when he thinks such decisions will be made?