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Personal Care at Home Bill

I am not going to give way, because I want to address the point made by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire and answer some of the other points that he and his hon. Friends made in saying that under the Bill, such care would be free. I regret that the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) does not share our concern about families who have had to run down their savings and now face high costs because of high needs. The people who will benefit from this Bill mostly do not have high incomes relative to the population as a whole. It is the cost of care for those people that would be met, and it would be driven through personal budgets—a key issue that many hon. Members raised—so that they get real choice and real control over the kind of services they need to live their lives as they want to. Many hon. Members also supported the principle of reablement support to help lift another 130,000 people at a low point in their lives, perhaps after a bereavement, a fall or a period in hospital. Reablement will help people to regain or retain their independence. The Bill will help us to drive forward a process to provide reablement care not just in a few councils but in every council, so that people will get the physiotherapy and personal support to learn how to perform daily tasks after an illness or injury. They will also get the adaptations to their home to make it wheelchair friendly. We will use new technology and telecare such as alarms and electronic pill dispensers to improve safety. By extending that support to those with lower level needs, we can help to reduce the isolation that can occur and keep these people active. We can prevent people from slipping to the point where more intensive care and support is required. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) raised the question of carers' support needs being met. As part of the user's assessment, there will be an opportunity to consider the carer's needs in designing the care and support package. The carer will also be entitled to ask for a specific care assessment to ensure that their needs are identified. I regret the hon. Member for Eddisbury's claim that this Bill will create more of a burden on carers. It will help to free up financial resources, which can then be spent to alleviate the caring burden. Questions were raised about discrimination between those in residential care and those being cared for at home. I draw hon. Members' attention to the explanatory notes that accompany the Bill and spell out clearly why the different treatment of people living at home is not discriminatory. In the time I have, I cannot spell out the details, but hon. Members can read the notes. Caring for the most vulnerable in our society is now quite rightly taking centre stage in our politics. It is an issue that arouses strong feeling, and a challenge that this Government are determined to tackle in the fairest possible way. We have a long way to go to create a national care service and to do for social care what the NHS has done for health care—to eradicate the fear and uncertainty that surrounds people with care needs. We said when we launched the Green Paper that we wanted to build an unstoppable momentum on this issue. Failure to take forward radical reform would compound the unfairness, would mean an inadequate care budget being stretched to breaking point, and would mean more and more people being denied the help they need. I do not want to live in that sort of society—in a dog-eat-dog world where people have to fight tooth and nail to get the care they need. Today's Bill is about turning our backs on that depressing vision and embracing a future in which care is provided on the basis of need, not wealth. Unquestionably, there will be challenges ahead to improve quality, provide guarantees of services and standards and end the lottery in social care. However, today we take a decisive and necessary step forward, and I commend this Bill to the House. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read a Second time.