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Personal Care at Home Bill

But many were only adequate, as the Minister with responsibility for care services knows very well. That is not a party political point. We need to ensure that quality is as good as any of us would expect for ourselves or our relatives. The second thing that we need to do is well understood but not always achieved: we must be sure that we have the social care work force available to make that happen. That is affected by the esteem in which social workers are held, and by factors in the social care sector. It is not a well-paid sector, and it is rarely at the forefront of the public's mind when it comes to understanding what provides value in the community. However, it does provide important services on which we depend greatly. The presence of that work force is important, and it is important that we support it. I say that because in these debates we tend to focus on funding and organisation, but we must always look beyond that. The Secretary of State, in his introduction to the Bill, said something that I echo: for 12 and a half years, which just happens to be the length of time that the Labour Government have been in office, the Government have failed to bring to care, support and long-term care funding the long-term structural reform that they repeatedly promised. It was in 1997 that, for example, Mr. Tony Blair said that he did not want to live in a country where older people had to sell their homes to pay for care. Some 13 years later, that is still precisely the situation. Just after the 1997 general election, the Labour Government established the royal commission on long-term care, which reported in 1999. The Secretary of State said that this Bill was the direct response to that, but perhaps I have missed something, because my recollection was that a Labour Government had rejected the central recommendations of that royal commission.