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Personal Care at Home Bill

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) on being the first Minister of the next Conservative Government to propose a Henry VIII clause, seeking powers to create law by order on a wide range of subjects. He will, of course, be the first of many. Indeed, I suspect that he will propose many other such order-making powers in the months and years ahead. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), like me, has proposed similar order-making powers in the past. Were he to read in detail some of the statutes that he has recommended to the House, he would see that they contain such powers. Oppositions normally resist Henry VIII powers, rather than propose them, so I inquire of myself why my hon. Friend should have proposed such a wide-ranging order-making power. I have to say that I can see why he has done it. As the hon. Members for South Thanet and for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) recognised, my hon. Friend is in some sense responding to the challenge offered by the Minister, who, in response to the previous set of amendments, stressed that the Government consider the personal care at home policy an incremental change in the evolution of policy on social care delivery. That is, I think, the best gloss that can be put on the policy, and I congratulate the Minister on doing it. As became clear during discussion of earlier amendments and debates on the Bill, however, in reality the policy will, if executed, create in the short term a series of clear anomalies. My hon. Friend is therefore seeking a power on behalf of the Secretary of State to create a safety valve allowing precisely the kind of incremental development of policy that the Minister said was the Government's intention. It is important to be clear why my hon. Friend's proposed safety valve will be so important so quickly, and to understand that we must recognise that we are dealing with a set of services for which demand is growing rapidly. Ironically, the Government are creating a set of unintended consequences. They are saying that those living at home will receive tax-funded care, whereas those living in residential care will continue to rely on co-payment provision. I simply invite the Committee to consider which of those two funding packages is most likely to be able to respond to the very fast growing demand for these services in the years ahead. Is it the delivery of care at home, which relies on the ability of the Exchequer to pay for it, or the delivery of care in a residential context, which relies on a co-payment formula, requiring the care user to make a contribution?