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Personal Care at Home Bill

The Minister says that he is writing copious notes. Well, it would be nice to get an indication, either now or in the winding-up speech, of whether this Government are open to amending the Bill to beef it up and make it something we can respect. We are debating the Bill on Second Reading, which happens to fall three months before a general election. It looks like there has been a dash for policy and a rush to put a tick in a box, so I have to ask the Secretary of State, in his absence, whether he was constantly last in the queue when the Prime Minister was doling out time for Bills to be debated in Parliament. How many Parliaments have we had to go through before finally reaching the Second Reading of such a Bill? We now seem to have a concession: a small Bill squeezed in just before we go to the polls. That is a shameful exercise, I am afraid, considering the deterioration of the service, which has been remarked upon across the Chamber—the fall in the coverage of care and the rising costs of it over the past decade. The timing of the Bill is certainly questionable. It is also questionable in relation to the Green Paper, because we are midway through a wider consultation on the aspects of social reform. My intervention—the first the Secretary of State took—was, why are we having this Bill now? He could not give me a clear answer; he could not acknowledge the fact that the Bill is part of an electoral cycle, rather than solid policy being put forward. Also, we have to ask ourselves, what is not in the Bill? It is thin on substance and there is little to disagree with, but there is little in the Bill in the first place. The costs of the Bill have not been outlined at all. Perhaps we will get more clarity in the winding-up speech. We have had the pre-Budget report, which included a black hole in the finances. We now have a Bill that includes a black hole in the finances. It is vague about how local authorities will foot the bill without having a knock-on impact on other services. It is worth reminding ourselves what personal care means. It is personal hygiene, such as bathing, continence management and assistance with eating; personal assistance, such as dressing and so forth; and simple treatment. It does not include nursing, which is not seen as part of personal care. Returning to that Labour royal commission on long-term care, which reported in 1999, it recommended that long-term care should be split into living costs, housing costs and personal care, and that personal care should be available after an assessment and paid out of general taxation. Most of the recommendations were accepted, but not that one on the aspect concerning personal care. The reason cited was that there were not enough resources. It is peculiar that we have just had a huge recession—the biggest since the second world war—and suddenly finances seem to have been made available.