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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and her colleagues on tabling this amendment and presenting it so coherently and persuasively. The need for it is paramount. It is the most important amendment for disabled people that the Government can address. Labour Peers lean over backwards to make things easy for the Government because we support them, but on this occasion we feel a bit perplexed because they do not seem to accept the powerful case for this specific provision. We have had delay so often in this area. I have been involved in politics for 40 years and there has always been an excuse why Governments cannot do this or that. Although this Government have a marvellous record on disability and other things, they have failed to rise to the occasion on this matter. We have heard Labour and Conservative Peers put their cases. What are we waiting for? All sides—Labour, Liberal and Conservative—support the amendment. An absurd piece of propaganda recently stated that the amendment would tie the hands of local authorities. That is preposterous. The compassion that would flow out of the amendment should not go to well heeled local authorities, but to poor, disabled and old people. So that advice was out of touch with reality. Noble Lords who have spoken on this, including the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and countless organisations support the amendment. Some 50, 60 or 70 of these organisations, which represent the blind, the paralysed and so on are unanimous in saying to the Government, ““Please let us have this amendment””. These people are at the coal face of disability and live with these problems. They do not work in offices in Whitehall that are remote from reality. I hope that the Government will, for once, say, ““Okay, we will take this back and give a commitment, not in two years or in a Green Paper. We will face this now. You want this now and you need it now””. Although I am criticising the Government, I am aware that they have been kind to many disabled people and to me personally; but they are making a huge mistake if they fail to provide now for the measures in the amendment. I ask them to take this back and bring back a solution that will satisfy every disabled person in Britain.