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Personal Care at Home Bill

I wish to speak briefly to new clause 5, which proposes:""The Secretary of State shall make regulations to introduce a standardised assessment process to ensure portability of care packages between authorities."" That really is as simple as it sounds, but it is fundamentally important. I am seeking the Minister's reassurance that the proposal will be taken seriously, and perhaps looked at in the Lords. If that can happen, I will not press it to a vote. If not, I would be minded to do so. The purpose of the policy behind the Bill is very simple. I have said that it offers only a partial solution, but it does guarantee free personal care for those with critical needs who live in their own home. In that case, surely someone who has been deemed to qualify under the terms of the policy should not be penalised if they move. People move to be closer to members of their family, for example. This applies often, but not exclusively, to older people, who move in order to get care from family members or to gain emotional support and greater contact. I am sure that hon. Members have heard of many cases of people moving to a different area and having to jump through hoop after hoop, simply to receive the same level of care that they had been receiving before. It is bureaucratic nonsense, as well as a real injustice, when people with real needs are prevented from accessing the kind of care that they had been used to, simply because they have changed their postcode. It would be quite wrong for people to face that threat, as they might if the new clause were not introduced. Again, I ask the Minister to reassure me that that will not be the case. People could become marooned in a local authority area, afraid to move closer to their family or some other support network because they would have to go through yet another assessment process. There are also costs associated with such reassessments. One can understand why a local authority might want to assess every new person moving into its area, but it does not make sense to do so if the assessment processes are as robust as they should be. A local authority should be able to accept the assessment or reablement process that has already shown that a person qualifies for free personal care at home. I firmly believe that we are talking about a very important element of the Bill, and I am concerned that this measure may be a flaw in making it work and a restriction on its potential positive impacts. I urge the Minister at least to reassure me and the Committee that that will be taken very seriously when the Bill goes to the Lords. I am disappointed that the Conservatives, rather bafflingly, have chosen not to support the new clause, because it would not involve costs but in fact reduce costs at local authority level. If a local authority insisted on going through an unnecessary assessment process merely because it wanted to keep its own costs down, that would not make sense. The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) chose instead to make rather spurious party political points, which had the whiff of hypocrisy about them given the criticism that the Minister and the Government have received to the effect that this is simply about electioneering. Let us at least be a little sensible when we are talking about such serious matters. I do not wish to push the new clause to a vote. However, can the Minister reassure me that it very much reflects part of the Government's thinking and that the measures in the Bill will not be undermined but will work in the way that he has told us they will?