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Personal Care at Home Bill

We have had an interesting debate on this amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) described it as an "open ended carte blanche free hand to redesign the whole of the personal care system by diktat"—what a temptation that possibility offers! It is very strong, but unfortunately I am unable to support this probing amendment. A number of important points were made in the debate. In moving the amendment, the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) once again challenged the extent to which the Bill and its proposals for free personal care for people at home with the greatest care needs were congruent with the Government's thinking on developing a national care service. I am absolutely convinced that it is a step along that path, as I said in the debate on the previous series of amendment. I set out then everything that we had done over the past 12 or 18 months to develop and improve this country's social care system, and I think that this proposal is simply another feature of that. The amendment would allow a future Conservative to introduce changes to the care system, but the remarks made by the hon. Member for Eddisbury let the cat out of the bag. From what the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) said, it is clear that the Conservatives see what the Government are trying to do as a perverse incentive and an anomaly. I cannot think why the right hon. Gentleman would want to put out a leaflet with his name on it in my constituency, saying that providing free personal care was an anomaly, and perverse. I shall have to check Hansard to make sure that I wrote this down correctly, but the hon. Member for Eddisbury said, "We do not want to encourage a policy of free personal care for people in their own home. This is not the direction of travel of Conservative policy." It is interesting that the amendment has flushed out what I think is the true intent behind the Conservative position on these matters.