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Personal Care at Home Bill

The hon. Gentleman fully accepts, I think, that although the Secretary of State, in his current role, has made it clear that, as part of a legacy, or whatever he wishes to claim for it, he seeks an unstoppable momentum beyond the next election, our concern is that, strangely enough, the Bill is in danger of not creating that momentum. Indeed, it could do the opposite, because it is not consonant with the whole approach to the reform of social care that we hope the Green Paper process, which so many of us have bought into, will achieve. I fully accept that, ultimately, there is only one way forward, which is for the country, through its elected representatives across the House, to seek a genuinely broad consensus. We will never satisfy either those who think there should be a fully taxpayer-funded option or those who think we should have a complete free-for-all in the private market. The solution lies somewhere between the two. We have had that discussion with Government Members. We know that a number of them would not go along with what has been proposed, so reaching that point will be a tough challenge. That is why amendment 11 is important in clarifying the intent. However, I will wait to see how the Committee feels about the issue before I make a decision on whether to press the amendment to a vote, because I take seriously the idea that we need the best and most solid consensus that we can achieve. One thing that I should say—I see that the Minister is in discussion at the moment—is that it would be helpful in building that consensus if there were a genuine willingness on the part of the Government to start some discussions and to invite in those of us who wish to build that consensus. However, while we remain only in discussion across the Dispatch Box, which is necessarily a somewhat scrutinising and adversarial approach, we diminish our chance of achieving a consensus. However, that is perhaps the nature of the run-up to the election, with the tribalism now being displayed.