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Breaks for Carers of Disabled Children Regulations 2011

My Lords, I accept the force of the noble Baroness’s first point about wanting to make sure that quality generally is raised and that we are able to learn from good practice and spread it more widely. I understand that we are looking at incentive payments for meeting those duties under the early intervention grant. There may be other more detailed ways in which we are following that up and if there are I will come back to her on those. As regards underperforming local authorities, I understand that we have advertised a contract to continue supporting local authorities to deliver better services working with the voluntary sector. That may also be part of the answer to the noble Baroness’s question. As regards what one does about following the money, as it were, I come back to my point that there is a statutory duty on local authorities to provide these services, as the noble Baroness recognised. However, it is true that one of the consequences of removing ring fences and devolving responsibility for spending money to local authorities is that one does devolve that money and allows local authorities to make those judgments. However, I think that, collectively, a range of people will want to make sure that those statutory duties are fulfilled and that local authorities provide decent services to some of the most vulnerable people and their carers who do a heroic job and need all the support that they can get. Motion agreed.