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Personal Care at Home Bill

The Secretary of State is asking me to anticipate the rest of my argument. We have made it clear that we see a case for enabling people to have greater certainty. That is why at our party conference my colleagues and I proposed—[Interruption.] Every time we ask the Secretary of State to answer a question yes or no, he always gives us a long answer, which is never yes or no. I do not see why I should be any different. We want to give people the opportunity to create greater certainty and to meet their costs. The question is what is the best way of doing it. In their Green Paper, the Government put forward options that include using disability benefits, forcing people to take insurance, or giving people the opportunity to take out insurance. We, for our part, made it clear at our party conference that we wanted to develop the opportunity for people to take out insurance but did not think it right to do that for every care need. As I have said before, there is a good argument for offering people the opportunity to take out what we regard as affordable insurance not only for long-term residential care costs that place their home at risk, but for critical care needs, because the costs of care for those who are means-tested tend to accumulate and can deprive them of their assets. The Secretary of State must know that those are people who have significant cash assets and whose home is not at risk at the point in question. There may be a realistic and affordable opportunity to allow them, too, to offset their risks through insurance and have the certainty for which they are looking.