---

Personal Care at Home Bill

It will be a standardised assessment tool described in regulations and guidance. There will still need to be local application of it, but the tool itself will be standardised in the way that I believe the new clause describes. That is what we are consulting on now through the consultation document. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman that we understand the need that he describes. That is a slightly different point from the one about the fair access to care criteria, which the hon. Member for Eddisbury mentioned. We have just completed consultation on fair access guidance, because there was concern that the level of local interpretation was such that unacceptable differences between areas were being created. New guidance, based on the consultation that we have put out, will be issued in March and will reduce the level of interpretation—I would describe it as misinterpretation—that was allowing for those differences. The combination of the revised guidance and the new standardised assessment tool will achieve the outcomes that he and the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West seek. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) took the opportunity provided by the new clause to make a point about the integration of health and social care, and the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) echoed that. It is true that we are seeing different styles and different approaches to that integration in different parts of the country, and the right hon. Gentleman was right to suggest that there is more than one approach. He made some very good points about that. My hon. Friend made a strong bid for a particular model and described its characteristics, and I will take it as a contribution to our thinking about a national care service. It is not a matter for today, but we will have to address the dilemmas about ring-fencing and so on as we go forward. I turn briefly to the questions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) asked about the applicability of the Bill. I can assure him that we have conversations at official and ministerial level about that, although I would distinguish between the current Green Paper and White Paper developments and the Bill. The provisions in the Bill are only for England, and provisions in relation to Wales will simply give the Welsh Assembly Government the powers to take forward the proposals that we are making, should they wish to do so. We will get to amendment 28 later, but I wish to put it on record now that good practice is exchanged. I understand that the Welsh Assembly Government are consulting on their own Green Paper, and we need to ensure that we collaborate and co-operate across the nations to get the best possible outcome for all involved. We must also deal with the problems that the hon. Member for Eddisbury mentioned of people living very close to the border on either side. I hope that I have answered all the questions that I was asked and, given my replies, I ask hon. Members not to press their amendments.