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Personal Care at Home Bill

Amendment 17 would remove new subsection (4C) and amendment 18 would change the word "undergoing" to something that we think will improve matters. I shall have explained where the Committee's opinion may best be tested by the time I conclude my remarks. The Committee will see that, once again, the Government are falling over themselves in the drafting of this clause. Bad drafting is of course indicative of bad legislation, and the circumlocutions in this provision are a mark of the Government's political motives, which we have already discussed. How would a lawyer define, for instance, a""process designed to maximise the person's ability to live independently"?" Marriage would seem an obvious example of such a process, but I cannot imagine for a second that we will have local authorities mandating that. This is, of course, a legislative reference to reablement. I am not convinced, in truth, that reablement needs to be on the face of the Bill. It does not need legislation to make it work, of course, and surely that should be the test of access to the statute book. More worryingly, the way that the Bill is drafted means that it does not allow a local authority to refuse to provide care until the reablement process has occurred. For example, let us say that Mrs. X has suspected critical needs. She applies for an assessment, which takes three weeks—that is not unusual. She is told that she needs reablement, specifically a stair lift and a walk-in bath, which might normally take a further month to purchase and install—let us hope so. It is January, and the council's budgets are tight, so it slows down the process in the knowledge that it does not have to start funding her until the reablement has, in the terms of the proposed new subsection, been undergone. Mrs. X has three months without the care that she needs. That is a legally enforceable event under the Bill as drafted, hence my criticism. Will the Minister confirm whether the Bill would take precedence over section 47 of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, notably subsection 1(b), which states that a local authority must make a decision as soon as an assessment is carried out, and subsection 5, which does not""prevent a local authority from temporarily providing or arranging for the provision of community care services for any person without carrying out a prior assessment"?" The Minister has confirmed in answer to a parliamentary question that""there are uncertainties about the long-term impact of re-ablement on the need for care, we cannot make an accurate forecast at this current time."—[Official Report, 14 December 2009; Vol. 502, c. 764W.]" So much for evidence-based policy. Amendment 18 is the amendment that the Committee might want to see tested. Amendment 19 asks how many rounds of reablement people will get. In a response to a parliamentary question, the Minister said:""There are currently no proposals to restrict packages of re-ablement."" He went on to say, however:""It will be for councils to determine who might benefit from this intervention and whether it is appropriate to repeat this at a later date."—[Official Report, 8 December 2009; Vol. 502, c. 291W.]" Does that mean that the Government will fund reablement that goes outside the indicative grants to local authorities? Amendment 20 would prevent reablement from including an informal carer. Will the Minister confirm that reablement will never include an obligation on a family member to take up informal caring responsibilities? Returning to the question of personal care, it seems that carers will continue to be taken into account in the assessment of whether someone has critical needs. The Government's estimate is that only 50 per cent. of carers for people with critical needs and only 5 per cent. of carers for people with moderate needs will give up that informal care when they see that if they do that care will be provided free of charge. Do such small figures hold water when it comes to the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) earlier?