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Personal Care at Home Bill

That has neither been addressed in the Bill, nor been addressed for a very long time. The costs of delivering care in rural areas are often much higher and, to mention just one difficulty, it is often very difficult to recruit care workers, so the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. This whole process raises some serious questions about who is ultimately responsible for the proposal. Given that there was nothing about it in the Green Paper, did it emanate from the Department of Health or from No. 10 Downing street? How long had the team at the Department of Health been working on the proposal prior to that conference speech? Does the Minister wish to intervene, because I would be very interested to learn when that information was made known to the team working on the Green Paper? When were they informed? I turn to the impact of the proposal. I completely support the Bill's measures on reablement. It makes absolute sense for much more to be done to prevent ill health in the first place, and to ensure that resources are put into maintaining people better in their own homes, but are the measures consistent with the Green Paper objectives? The Green Paper stresses the need to make the""best use of public money to provide a joined-up, consistent and fair care and support system"." I strongly endorse that objective. It goes on to say:""We can use the taxpayers' money that is already in the system to provide everyone"—" not just one group of people—""with some care. We believe that that should be the starting point"." That is interesting, because that appears to be a very different starting point as a bridge to a reformed system. The Green Paper goes on to say that""any system must be a partnership between the state and individuals"." The Green Paper also rules out funding the new system from taxation as too heavy a burden on people of working age. I appreciate that the intention is not to provide care for all, but for the Bill to go in that direction appears to be completely contrary to the intentions of the Green Paper. Therefore, the Bill fails on all these tests: it is not joined up; it is not consistent with the Green Paper; it helps one group, but not all; it is not a partnership approach; and it is funded by general taxation, contrary to the intentions of the Green Paper.