---

Column 531

and disabled people in the community have their services provided in that spirit of partnership that has so shifted our thinking about the provision of support.

The programme "Does he take sugar?" has a message for us all. The principles enshrined in the 1986 Act have profoundly changed our views of the welfare state. We have moved away from the paternalistic provision of services to a spirit of partnership.

Many of the provisions of the 1986 Act have already been established. However, the hon. Gentleman wants us to move further and faster. Our community care reforms are the most fundamental and wide-ranging measures to be taken in the area for many years. I very much hope that the substantial benefits that they will bring to all those affected by aging or disability will receive wider recognition and understanding.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to harness the enthusiasm, lobbying and commitment of the many groups that have supported the 1986 Act and ensure that that energy is translated into support for the implementation of care in the community. As local authorities carry forward their community care plans and move forward with specific work on assessment and guidance to fully implement community care, I hope that they will have the active involvement of local voluntary organisations and the disabled themselves. The hon. Gentleman is aware that the White Paper "Caring for People" makes it clear that we would not at the moment implement section 7 of the 1986 Act. That is partly because we have a major programme to provide support for the mentally ill in the community. The specific grant established on 1 April this year, resources amounting to £155 million over the next three years to provide support for the mentally ill and the establishment of care programmes with collaboration between health and local authorities to ensure that a group that both the hon. Gentleman and I would agree have not traditionally achieved the practical and effective support required in the community, will all make a substantial difference. More recently, we reached a similar decision in respect of sections 1, 2 and 3 of the 1986 Act, which concern the appointments and rights of authorised representatives of disabled people and the rights of disabled people to make representations. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's argument that the establishment of complaints procedures, a requirement from 1 April this year, does not make a significant difference to those receiving the services.

More fundamentally, it is a requirement that, in drawing up community care plans, users' and carers' interests should be considered. Furthermore, in the establishment of assessment procedures, where we have already produced the policy guidance and where we will now produce the practice guidance, there is clearly a role to promote and encourage advocacy schemes.

We help to fund the National Citizens Advocacy, Skills for People, Barriers into Action and the Royal National Institute for the Deaf in carrying forward their guidance and support to local authorities in implementing advocacy schemes. I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's example of an advocacy arrangement that he witnessed yesterday. I was present in my constituency last week to see the initiation of the commissioner of social service users and carers working to promote advocacy schemes.

---

Column 532

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and others concerned about how we can use the spirit of those principles, in identifying, in the practice guidance that we are now preparing on assessment, how we can further encourage and promote schemes that we both agree should ensure that the wishes, interests and needs of the user are properly recognised and understood.

We did not take the view that this was the time to introduce a statutory, formal, bureaucratic, uniform administrative procedure. It is not only a question of costs, which I think the hon. Gentleman will agree are notoriously difficult to assess : much more that, when there is such a great movement to the full implementation of community care, it is not the time statutorily to introduce this part of the hon. Gentleman's Act. I do not want him to underestimate the impact that his Act has had on our change of thinking and on the work being done to improve services for those with disabilities. The range of sections, and the work that is continuing as a result of them, is legion.

There has been a report to Parliament on the care in the community of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. Earlier this year, we had reports from the social services inspectorate about the work being done to ensure that those leaving school were properly prepared for the community. The Children Act 1989 ensures that, for the first time, children with disabilities will be under the umbrella of children's legislation, and their needs and interests recognised. We are aware of the importance of information schemes. Only recently we helped to fund the national disability information project, so that those with disabilities have knowledge of and access to the range of resources in the community. There has been a profound culture change in this country, so that the needs of disabled people and all those who would benefit from community care are now viewed in a profoundly different way.

I should regret it if the hon. Gentleman felt that there was any discourtesy in the way in which the decisions have been announced. That was not the intention of any of the Ministers involved. I wish to make it clear that the all-party disablement group, the Act Now group, and the many voluntary organisations that have made a magnificent contribution to advancing improved care for the disabled, will continue to have an open door to my Department. We want to ensure that all the principles in the hon. Gentleman's Act are developed in our community care implementation. I call on him and on all the groups with which he works to work with us to ensure that community care is a success. As we turn policy into practice, we want to ensure that those larger groups of people in need of support in the community receive the help, partnership and assistance that is so important.

We have a major implementation programme ; we have the largest increase in spending on social service departments for 15 years ; we have a raft of policy guidance. We need the good will of the hon. Gentleman and everyone else to ensure that those policies are the success that he and I want them to be.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to Eleven o'clock.

---