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Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It will be interesting to see exactly what the commissioner can achieve over and above Members of Parliament and Ministers, and other representatives of older people. We shall be expecting rather a lot of this commissioner, and I am afraid that they will be expected to deliver. There is a very strong feeling, no matter where one’s constituency is, that there is discrimination against older people in terms of the way in which drugs are approved for handing out and the demands made on the health service. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say when we probe these issues further during the passage of the Bill. Because of the problems that older people have experienced and reported over the years, and because many of them are reluctant to complain about bad service or poor treatment, several organisations have argued for a dedicated commissioner who can stand up to defend and enforce older people’s rights and promote age equality in service provision across the board. However, we should be under no illusions, and we certainly should not try to kid the people of Wales into believing that the commissioner will be a panacea for every problem faced by older people. Several people have rightly argued that the commissioner will be no substitute for improvements such as a better basic state pension or improved personal care. Indeed, when the Bill was published, Help the Aged warned that"““pensions reform and an end to means-tested pensions would do more to improve the lives of pensioner households””." Nor will the commissioner do much to alleviate the swingeing 94 per cent.—or £467—increase in band D council tax that has hammered many older people in Wales, or to sort out the chronic problems of the health service in Wales, where older people are reckoned to account for about 60 per cent. of spending. Moreover, legislation alone will not eradicate discrimination overnight. That requires a change of attitudes, which will, unfortunately, take time. However, anything that the newly appointed commissioner can do to speed up the process will be welcome. The Secretary of State outlined the various stages through which the Bill has passed, but rather than dwell on those I want to touch on some of the issues that arose as it made its way through the other place and which we may wish to explore in Committee. I am still not entirely clear about the precise role that the Government envisage for the commissioner or what is the primary function of that office. Is the commissioner a kind of Ofwat or Ofcom for the elderly, or something more? I am interested in what the Secretary of State said about the practical and common-sense operation of the system. How does he envisage that working? The Government call the commissioner an ““independent champion”” of older people and have given him a wide range of quasi-judicial powers. For example, clause 13 provides him with sweeping powers of entry, while clauses 9 and 11 confer on him, in carrying out some of his duties, the same powers as the High Court. In other words, in certain cases he, or she, may have the power to act as investigator, judge and jury. We will want to examine the circumstances in which those powers are to be exercised, as well as the extent of the envisaged operations of the commissioner’s staff. Another of the commissioner’s principal functions will be to make representations to the National Assembly on matters affecting the interests of older people—almost, in effect, usurping at worst, or duplicating at best, the role of Ministers. We will seek clarification on those areas and on the way in which the commissioner and his staff will work with, or across, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Welsh Assembly and other organisations. The Bill predates by some months the publication of the Government of Wales Bill, which formally ends the corporate Assembly and establishes the executive and legislative functions by establishing a Welsh Assembly Government as a distinctive entity. Does the Secretary of State envisage that the commissioner’s main representations will be made to the relevant Minister in the Assembly Government or to the Assembly itself, and how will that relationship work? Finance is another matter of concern. The office of the commissioner will be funded by the National Assembly out of money that has already been allocated to it under the block grant from Westminster. Start-up costs are estimated at £500,000, with annual running costs for the commissioner and a predicted staff of about 30 estimated at £1.5 million. We will want to know exactly what limits will be placed on that expenditure, how the office will operate, and what limits will be placed on the number of staff that the commissioner can employ. What discussions have been held with the First Minister and Members of the Welsh Assembly Government to establish where the money to run this operation will come from, and which areas of expenditure in Wales will be cut or sacrificed in order to find it? What could have been done with that money if it had been spent directly on older people and their needs? What other Departments in the Assembly will make cuts in their services to the elderly to pay for the new operation? Will they face some reductions in order to accommodate the large amount of money that has to be found in the budget for the commissioner? We believe that the commissioner should be independent and should make representations about the effectiveness of the operations of the Welsh Assembly Government and Ministers. But how can that happen if he is funded directly by the same Welsh Ministers upon whose performance he will be delivering a critical analysis? That is the scenario as a consequence of schedule 1 of the Bill and schedule 11 of the Government of Wales Bill. Responsibility for funding the commissioner will be transferred from the Assembly to Welsh Ministers, as it will in respect of the children’s commissioner. As my noble Friend Baroness Noakes pointed out in the other place, the result is that in future the commissioner’s funding is to be transferred to the very people from whom they are supposed to be independent. I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that that is illogical and undermines the Government’s argument that the commissioner will be an ““independent champion”” of older people. We should explore that in Committee. It is particularly relevant to repeat that the work of the commissioner will not act as a panacea given that under clause 2 the commissioner’s powers to make representations on behalf of older people will, as the Secretary of State confirmed, be confined to matters that are devolved to the National Assembly. He must be aware that a great many of the issues that affect older people in Wales will still be decided here in Westminster—pensions and benefits being two obvious examples. In addition, the limitation on the commissioner’s exercise of powers to devolved areas only is unrealistic as, in the words of my noble Friend Lord Roberts,"““Individual cases do not…fall neatly into devolved or non-devolved areas.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 February 2006; Vol. 678, c. 1240.]" My noble Friend speaks with considerable experience of political life in Wales, both as a long-serving Member of this House and as a Minister. Rather than simply making representations to the Assembly, which will then decide what, if any, action to take, would not it make sense to adopt a more pragmatic approach? I sense that the Secretary of State is considering that. Could not we amend the Bill so that, in some circumstances, the commissioner could have direct access to the relevant Secretary of State if he or she deems it necessary? I hope such an amendment will be considered in Committee without the Government appearing to lose face. We hope that we can work together constructively to get the measure right before it reaches the statute book.