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Personal Care at Home Bill

I accept that it is objectively true that if we raised tax, we could afford it. My hon. Friend and I have had the debate many times before as to whether people would accept that level of tax increases, particularly if it were income tax or taxes on earnings. I personally do not believe that they would; I know that he is a strong advocate of the case that they would accept it if they knew that it was going clearly into social care—that is the difference of opinion we have. That is exactly why my preferred solution to the problem would be a hypothecated inheritance tax. I think that that would be far more acceptable to people at large than extra tax on earnings. That is a debate for another day. When the Minister winds up the debate, I want to hear how he sees this Bill fitting into the wider reform. If he cannot tell us today because he is not ready to produce the White Paper, he needs at least to give us the assurance that, when he does produce it, it will clearly say how the measures in the Bill are going to fit in. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire raised some points with which I had some sympathy. One is the exclusion from the Bill of personal care costs if people go into residential accommodation. If we are going to pay people's personal care costs if they have the most serious needs, I do not see why we would want to exclude meeting those costs in residential care. We should not go down the route of paying people's board and lodgings, as I believe that we all have a fundamental duty to contribute to our board and lodgings, irrespective of the level of our care needs, but we should eventually meet the element of residential care costs to do with personal care. I realise that that is excluded from the Bill, but when we produce the White Paper and move on to the next stage of reform, I encourage the Minister to indicate how that need is going to be met. Carers also need to be taken into consideration. As I said in an intervention, under the Community Care (Delayed Discharges Etc.) Act 2003, anyone making an assessment of someone's care needs also has to carry out a carer's assessment. It seems to me that if somebody is receiving personal care in their home and part of that care is coming from a voluntary carer, and if as part of the care plan that the Secretary of State talked about, the need for that carer to have some respite from time to time is identified, I would hope that we could include the cost of that respite within the ambit of the Bill. The issue of benefits is certainly going to be raised. I have spoken to the Minister and to the Secretary of State about my concerns. Frankly, I would deal with that by allowing people to continue to receive attendance allowance, and not reform it. I have previously described attendance allowance as the ultimate direct payment, since it is not means-tested and provides cash that can be spent however the person wants to meet their care needs, as long as they go over a particular care threshold. Because of that, it is very valuable. For people who have saved and have some income, as a result of which they are excluded from pension credit, it can be a godsend if a non-means-tested benefit is available to them. Having said that, I understand the Government's position that people cannot receive money twice, so if they are having all their care needs met, they cannot also expect to have attendance allowance on top of it. What we could do, of course, is continue to give people attendance allowance, but top it up to the level needed to meet their care assessments. In that way, we could maintain attendance allowance and meet the full cost of people's personal care, which is the aim of the Bill.