House of Commons Hansard Debates for 24 Jan 1996 (pt 15)

Mr. Jamieson: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Oppenheim: No, I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman had quite enough time to put his case.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne, because he contacted Ministers as soon as he became aware of possible irregularities in the case. I make it absolutely clear that he was the first person to contact Ministers following the company's liquidation. He immediately passed all his

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information to Ministers, and he has kept in close touch with Ministers since then. He has acted properly and constructively throughout.

Ministers want to get to the bottom of the matter,put right any failings by the Department and be as open as possible about the circumstances. As soon as Ministers heard about the ROM-Data case, they asked the Department for an urgent report. The contents of that initial investigation, which was conducted in February 1995--shortly after the meeting with my hon. Friend--led to the decision to establish a full internal inquiry into the Department's handling of the case.

The inquiry's terms of reference were extended subsequently in light of emerging concerns--for example, concerns about earlier ministerial answers that were given on the basis of inaccurately supplied information,to which I have referred already. Parallel work by the Department on the circumstances of the ROM-Data Corporation led to the establishment of a separate SFO inquiry after the Department had referred the case to the SFO in August 1995.

The Department aims to find out what happened, where, and how any mistakes were made in its handling of the case, and to suggest ways of preventing such failings occurring again in future. I attach particular importance to that last point, as will be apparent from what I have said about the important action that the Department will take. It is clear that there have been procedural failings, and,if we find that DTI officials have breached the Department's rules of conduct, they will be held to account through the Department's disciplinary procedures.

Mr. Jamieson: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Oppenheim: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he has taken up half the time available for debate.He raised a series of complex issues, and I am doing my best to address them. I must add that most of those issues had already been raised separately by my hon. Friend in whose constituency the problem occurred. I do not believe that the hon. Member for Devonport has any constituency interest.

The SFO must determine whether others have acted improperly, and its inquiries are continuing.

Mr. Anthony Steen (South Hams): Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Oppenheim: I hope that my hon. Friend will excuse me, but I have only a few minutes in which to conclude my speech.

Finally, I shall put the unfortunate events into context. As my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne pointed out, regional selective assistance is a highly successful and popular scheme. Last year, the DTI offered grants of £159 million, which are expected to result in £1.3 billion in new investment and the creation or safeguarding of 36,000 jobs. In the same year, we wrote off less than £2.5 million. That is too much, as no one likes to see public money lost. However, some failures are inevitable and the RSA failure rate is extremely low. We must learn the lessons from this case, in order to prevent any repetition in the future.

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Rest Homes

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Before the House debates the next topic, I want to point out that although the Adjournment debate embraces different topics, technically it is one debate, so that any right hon. or hon. Member who wants to speak twice should seek the leave of House. That is the case for the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait).

1 pm

Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Hastings and Rye): I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker and I hope that, with the leave of the House, I may be permitted to speak again. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of rest homes for the elderly, and to the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea(Mr. Bowis), for kindly taking time out from a busy day to respond to my concerns.

I have long taken an interest in rest homes for the elderly, and the debate was provoked by a document from the Centre for Policy on Ageing, "Home Life II", to which I shall refer later. First, I refer to the bed blocking that occurred over Christmas because social workers, for all sorts of valid reasons including flu, were not available to ensure the appropriate care. Many of my constituents involved in the rest home sector made the sensible proposal that in such cases, there is no reason why a hospital could not discharge into a rest or nursing home, for respite-type care over a brief period, people who could so benefit. Hospital beds would not be blocked, but available for more crucial cases, and social workers would have adequate time to make an assessment. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could throw that suggestion into the melting pot of ideas when his Department considers the matter.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster): Does my hon. Friend's constituency encounter the same problem as Lancashire, where the Labour-controlled county council keeps open expensive county homes rather than use more efficiently run and cheaper private homes?

Mrs. Lait: My hon. Friend anticipates my next point. That problem exists in East Sussex, as in other counties. Sometimes it is caused by people being inappropriately allocated to nursing homes, rest homes or domiciliary care. General practitioners have reported seeing bed sores of considerable size and complexity on elderly residents in rest homes who should be in nursing homes. Similarly, there are people in domiciliary care who should be in rest homes. At one stage, Lancashire county council was maintaining people in domiciliary care in their homes on packages costing £1,000 a week. I understand that that practice has come to an end, but in Hertfordshire, payments to private sector nursing homes have reduced from £370 to £350. Some nursing homes have been allowed residential care beds, with an insistence on the same staffing levels, and are paid only £250 a week. It is not difficult to anticipate the problems as county pressure increases on the private sector to reduce nursing home fees to £250 to cater for Hertfordshire residents, while county-owned beds will be considerably more expensive.

As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, East Sussex is currently wasting £4 million a year by overpaying itself to the extent of £100 per week per bed. The solution is to

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split the purchaser from the provider. As long as the present system remains--whereby social service departments are providers and inspectors and they let the contracts--we shall continue to receive justified criticisms from the private sector.

The Centre for Policy on Ageing was instrumental in producing the Government-sponsored report "Home Life", which set out rest home care standards that are generally accepted and agreed. Subsequently and under the same chairman, Lady Avebury, the centre established a further working party to produce "Home Life II".In fairness to the working party, Lady Avebury and the centre's director, Gillian Dalley--who has been helpful in advising me--I shall quote from a letter that Gillian Dalley wrote to me, referring to

"the draft which has been circulating without the Advisory Group's authorisation."

She wrote also to everyone who commented on the draft:

"The draft of the revised document which many of you have seen was an interim draft not intended for public circulation because further work and editing was going on."

I completely accept that explanation, but when the draft entered the public domain of the rest home sector,it caused those of my constituents who are rest home owners and others throughout East Sussex promptly to contact me, because of the history of Government sponsorship of "Home Life". The fear was that the Government had sponsored "Home Life II" as well.

The interim draft included the recommendation that every rest home room should measure 12 sq m, excluding bathroom facilities, and that 15 sq m would be better. In Hastings and St. Leonards, we are in the process of raising a large sum to help our local voluntary association for the blind to provide rooms that measure 10 sq m--the current standard. It does not take a big leap of the imagination to appreciate the effect on the private, public and voluntary sectors of a requirement for rest home rooms measuring 12 sq m or 15 sq m.

The interim draft's other recommendations include:

"Residents should not be thought of as objects of charity to be entertained through carol singing or children's plays, or be recipients of harvest festival goods or Christmas presents."

That is one of the draft's more ludicrous suggestions.