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Health and Social Care Bill

I rise briefly to support warmly the amendment so ably proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, perhaps in part for a personal reason. The principle embodied in the amendment is totally unexceptionable. After all, we have been beset for many years in a different field of the National Health Service by the problem of what one might call ““postcode prescribing””. We have known over the years that many authorities in the NHS have been willing to prescribe certain drugs that others have not. There is no doubt whatever that there is a significant degree of unevenness of social provision throughout the United Kingdom. My younger daughter—even though she is now 57—was a senior nurse in an area in central southern England. More than two years ago, she suffered a very serious accident that left her with spinal and other injuries and a substantial degree of disability. She was in hospital for some considerable time, but when she returned to her own home in that same area, the quality of services and support available to her was frankly quite appalling. Happily, the family was able to arrange for her to move to a specially adapted home not very far from my own in Northumberland, where, by contrast, the services and support appropriate to a person with her degree of disability that she has received from the social services have been quite outstanding. The contrast could not be more striking. If she had moved in the other direction, there would have been a quite serious problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has highlighted it and it could be corrected if the amendment were to be carried. The principle is very important: evenness of provision throughout the country.