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Personal Care at Home Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. A number of us have been reflecting on whether the way that this House scrutinises legislation has yet reached perfection. One of the principles that we are looking at is the question of how the House looks at whether legislation is ready to come to this House. It is apparent to a number of us that the Government ought to make clear before they introduce legislation what their policy position is in sufficient detail to understand it, how they have consulted and what the consequences of that consultation are, and that the detail of the legislation is clear enough that the House is able to scrutinise whether it will actually achieve the policy objectives which the Government are advancing. I am not an expert on the content of the Bill, but it seems to me from the debate I have heard today that it fails these tests in a number of ways. This is a massively important issue. There is hardly a more important issue facing public policy than how you address the challenge of coping with care for adults when we are faced with demographic changes over the next decade. The Government have, rightly, been struggling thoughtfully with that issue, as evidenced by the Green Paper. As a consequence, this is a huge policy shift, but we have not been given an explanation of the reasons for that shift. We do not understand how it will work in practice, nor what the consequences of the shift will be and for whom. We are certainly unclear whether this shift is sustainable: we see the trail of that in signals that this is only going to last for 18 months, with the hint that maybe it is going to be knocked on the head. I would not normally speak against my Government in this way, but I do not believe I am actually doing so. Allowing the proper consultation to take place, particularly on the regulations, allows the House to be better informed and do better scrutiny in Committee. I speak with the experience of the Merits Committee behind me; these are important issues that should be transparent. I therefore support my noble friend Lord Warner.