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Breaks for Carers of Disabled Children Regulations 2011

I am grateful for the comments made and for the general welcome for the detail of the regulations. I am glad to have had the endorsement of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Walmsley for her typically probing and detailed questions, some of which I will have to come back to, if she will allow me. I will circulate the letter to those who have an interest in the matter as she raised important questions about monitoring. There is broad agreement and I am happy to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, who said that she wanted reassurance that we will build on the momentum that has started and the work that the previous Government have done. I accept fully the point that as arrangements bed down, we will want to ensure that they work well on the ground. The ring-fence has concerned many. There is a tension operating between wanting to give local authorities more freedom to provide services that they think are best, and which best match the needs of local people. We need to bear in mind that the needs of carers in a sparse rural area like Cornwall will be different from those for families in more dense urban areas. We are keen to have flexibility, and it flows from there that we want to give that discretion to local authorities. I hope to provide some reassurance that there is a statutory duty on local authorities to provide those services. On the publication of the statements, I agree with my noble friend that a website is one way of disseminating information but not the only one. Generally, we will all in our different ways want to make sure that people are aware of their rights and the opportunities open to them. I hope that the provision of information and the shining of a spotlight will bring healthy pressure to bear on the providers of services and make sure that they are of high quality. I accept that we need to keep a careful eye on that. It is not enough just to construct a system, but not see how it operates in practice. We will all have a common interest in pursuing that. My noble friend Lady Walmsley asked about guidance which will be published very soon. The department has been working on it with local authorities and, as part of the guidance, two local authorities have come up with a draft statement of the services that they provide, which we will disseminate widely. One of the arguments in having a non-statutory approach to the guidance is that one can keep it flexible and keep updating it to take account of circumstances on the ground. Services will develop and we can learn from best practice in different parts of the country. We want to keep things flexible to make sure that those lessons are learnt. On the point about the obligation and duty on local authorities, Regulation 5 requires local authorities to have regard to the views of carers. The guidance will deal with questions of quality. Overall, I welcome the points made about the benefits of these regulations. Some of the broader concerns raised about how things will work out in practice I accept and understand, and we will work to address them. I will follow up any specific points that I have not addressed and circulate the responses but I hope that, given the support that these regulations have received from voluntary groups and those concerned in this area generally, the Committee will approve them. I have great pleasure in commending them to the Committee.