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Personal Care at Home Bill

As I have said, I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman in this area, but I do not understand the logic of what he just said. He says that he believes, as I do, that the successful delivery of social care requires co-payment, and he then says that agreement could not be reached with the Conservative party. I do not know what discussions took place between the Front-Bench teams, but I know that irrespective of whether those discussions were successful, he is using that as an excuse to justify a formula for the delivery of social care at home that does not rely on co-payment at all. It contains no element of co-payment; it is fully taxpayer-funded, and that is what makes this model unsustainable. I make the point again, because it is important, that this approach creates a completely perverse incentive. The hon. Gentleman and I agree that providing the necessary flexibility for a realistic funding package for social care must involve co-payment. In the Government's view of the world—if this Bill is passed—where does co-payment apply in the social care context? The answer is only in a residential care context. In other words, the Government are setting up a formula that will restrain the ability of people to live at home, because the taxpayer will not be able to afford it, and that will, at the margin, shift people into residential care, because that is the basis on which the funding formula will work.