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Older People's Rights (Health Care)

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) for his leadership of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and for his personal advocacy on behalf of some of the most vulnerable groups in our society. I have appeared before his Joint Committee to talk about the way in which the health and social care system treats older people and, recently, about the often unsatisfactory way in which it treats people with learning disabilities. Both of those inquiries have led to a sharper focus on the issues and, ultimately, will lead to significant cultural, regulatory and other changes to the way in which the health and social care system relates to older people and those with learning disabilities. He deserves tremendous personal credit, therefore, for championing unfashionable causes. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) made a very constructive and fair contribution to the debate and raised an interesting point about the difference between recommendations and conclusions. Of course, if any elements of the Joint Committee's report have not been responded to adequately, I am more than happy to have a fresh look at them. I am delighted to say that the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) made a fair and balanced contribution, which is a new approach from him to these issues. I welcome that very much. I do not want to contradict him, because his contribution was extremely constructive, but he made one inaccurate comment, and it is important to the debate about the YL judgment that we get this clear: neither publicly funded nor self-funded residents in private homes are currently covered by human rights legislation. His case was that in the future both groups should be covered. He would like us to go further than simply dealing with the anomaly and unintended consequences of the YL judgment. I accept that perfectly legitimate position, but his description of the situation—that one group of residents is covered, but the other is not—was incorrect.