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Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships for long but when the House was a good deal emptier than, for some strange reason, it is now, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, suggested that this was a wrecking amendment. I make it clear that it is not. The responses to the consultation have to be in by 23 February, though the Government asked that they be submitted by 26 January. For the Government to respond to that consultation need not take more than a week or two at the most. We can be in Committee, even if my noble friend Lord Warner’s amendment is accepted, by the second week in March, and the Government can have their Bill long before the date on which some other event might come along and interrupt our proceedings. It is not a wrecking amendment; it is an amendment to take the Bill in an orderly way, and I commend it to the House.