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Personal Care at Home Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I will come to what our local authority has had to say on this matter, as I have had conversations about it. He is right that the aspiration to end the postcode lottery may well be laudable, but the practicalities of getting it right are far harder. I will now deal briefly with costs and how the proposal might work, on the basis of the bare detail that we have been given so far. I cannot resist noting a comment made from the Government Front Bench earlier that the proposal will be subject to the "normal spending review process". It is a shame that the Secretary of State has disappeared again, as I wanted to put to him that it is a shame that we have had no comprehensive spending review to help us determine how it fits into the bigger picture, in terms not only of the health budget but of where our country is going. The Secretary of State has told us that the Bill will require a contribution of £420 million from his coffers and a further £250 million from those of local authorities. As has been suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser), and also by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), the co-ordination that the policy demands from local authorities is one of the main problems that we face. Informal discussions in which I have engaged with Norfolk county council, the local authority that I share with my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk, suggest that the council could incur a cost of £5 million. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that that could add up to £250 million if spread over an appropriate number of authorities on an annual basis. It should be borne in mind that Norfolk has already had to squeeze £15 million of efficiency savings out of next year's budget.