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Summer Recess
30. Mr. Winnick: To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will introduce proposals to shorten the summer recess.[30633]
32. Mr. Barnes: To ask the Lord President of the Council what representations he has received concerning the length of parliamentary recesses; and if he will make a statement.[30635]
Mr. Newton: I cannot yet give the House the proposed dates for the summer Adjournment, but I have no plans to make any radical departure from recent practice.
Mr. Winnick: That is unfortunate. What possible justification is there for having a three-month recess, which will commence shortly? Surely in this day and age, the summer recess should be much shorter, bearing it in mind that the House of Commons is already on a short-term week and that, often, voting takes place only on two days out of the five?
Mr. Newton: The point is that Members of Parliament have a wide range of duties other than attendance in the House and that this Parliament already sits longer than that of, I think, any other major western democracy. The balance between our sitting and our non-sitting days is about right.
Mr. Barnes: Some people think that Members of Parliament are a waste of time, and perhaps one or two are, but are we not all a waste of time if we do not have a Parliament? If a Parliament is not sitting for three months or more, and no formal avenues are available for the asking of questions and the probing of the Executive, what is the point of having an elected Parliament? Can we not spread the parliamentary year so that the breaks are shorter and therefore do not matter so much?
Mr. Newton: I am aware that suggestions such as that have been made from time to time. Let me point out, however, that it is not very long since the House received,
and subsequently debated and made decisions on, a report from a Select Committee of the House which examined all those matters carefully and made no such suggestion.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: Is not the House unique, in that we have constituency responsibilities? Do not most Members of Parliament spend the recesses at work in their constituencies, getting very close to their constituents? Perhaps those two questions are a reflection on the two hon. Members concerned.
Mr. Newton: Different Members of Parliament observably have different ways of going about the job. My hon. Friend is certainly assiduous in the interests of his constituents, and I am sure that he will continue to be so on whatever occasions the House is sitting.
Mr. Barry Porter: May I take this opportunity to welcome the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) back to the House following his recent illness? I am delighted to see him. Having said that, however, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House agrees that the country is infinitely better governed when we are not sitting? It has always struck me that that is so.
Mr. Newton: I hesitate to agree with that proposition, but I note that it is my hon. Friend's view.
Mrs. Dunwoody: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will have noted that, in replying to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), the Minister for Transport in London chose to mention his official consultancy. I am not in any way opposed to that, but I wonder whether that same Minister approached you in an attempt to extend Transport questions by at least another hour. If we are to mention all the consultancies held by Conservative Members, we shall require at least as long as that before any questions are answered.
Madam Speaker: That being the case, perhaps we should not rise for the summer recess until the end of September.
Orders of the Day
Community Care (Direct Payments) Bill [Lords]
Mr. David Hinchliffe (Wakefield): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss new clause 11--Regulation of services provided by persons not classed as individuals--
'.--(1) The Secretary of State shall, after consulting such persons as appear to him to have relevant knowledge or experience, by order introduce a scheme for the regulation of the provision of community care services under this Act, with particular regard to the purchase by a person to whom payments are made under section 1 or section 4 of independent domiciliary care from a person who is not classed as an individual for the purposes of any enactment relating to community care.
(2) An order under subsection (1) above shall be made by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.'.
Mr. Hinchliffe: New clause 5 is intended to safeguard the welfare of those who will obtain various community care services through the direct payment provisions in the Bill. Clearly, they include some very intimate services. Direct payments will enable people to pay for bathing, washing, dressing, cleaning and a range of other services, including, in certain instances, the handling of a person's money by the carer.
We should ensure that the quality of such care is properly regulated and inspected. New clause 5 provides for the regulation of domiciliary care: those providing such care would be subject to registration. The new clause also provides a system of inspection to monitor the quality of care that will--I stress this--be provided in the privacy of a client's home.
The background of the new clause will be well known to the Minister, and also to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench. For many years, there has been a serious anomaly in the provisions relating to domiciliary care. I refer to the lack of any form of registration and inspection procedures.
Way back in 1984, the House passed the Registered Homes Act, and more recently the Registered Homes (Amendment) Act 1991, both of which set out in detail statutory procedures that are designed to protect residents of care homes and nursing homes. The 1984 legislation, for example, requires the registration of all establishments providing care, and a named person deemed to be suitably qualified who is responsible in law for the operation of the establishment. Each establishment must have a named person who is recognised as being responsible. The legislation enables such homes to be inspected by local registration and inspection units. More important--it is not used often, except where serious problems arise--it provides for the cancellation of the registration and for the protection of residents who may be in the care home or nursing home at the time.
The anomaly, which the new clause seeks to address, is that although such provisions exist for people who live in care homes or nursing homes, there are no such provisions in law to provide for the inspection and registration of the care that is provided privately to people in their own homes. New clause 5 applies the principles of the Registered Homes Act to care that is provided through direct payments to people in their own homes. It would be highly irresponsible for the House to pass the Bill without proper safeguards on the quality of the care provided.
I underline the fact that I support very strongly the principle of direct payments, which is contained in the Bill, and I commend the hon. Member for Mid-Kent(Mr. Rowe), who has pressed the issue for many years and talked to me on numerous occasions about his concerns that policy should move in that direction. I know that he supports in principle my concerns about the lack of proper regulation of the provision of such care. The need for the registration and inspection of domiciliary care is long overdue.
When the House debated the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, amendments on the registration and inspection of domiciliary care, some of which had the support of hon. Members on the Government Benches, were blocked by the Government. Shortly after the 1990 Act became law, a 66-year-old woman in a wheelchair--I am not sure whether this happened in the Minister's constituency, but it was certainly not far from it--was murdered in her own home by the carer. It is to the credit of the agency that employed the carer convicted of the murder that it has been at the forefront of subsequent campaigning to bring about a proper statutory framework for the registration and inspection of domiciliary care. I know that it has, with a number of London boroughs, been involved in bringing about a voluntary scheme of accreditation in the London area.
Since the implementation of community care legislation in 1993, the Government have argued consistently that the contracting and purchasing arrangements that the legislation introduced provided appropriate measures to monitor the quality of the care provided. That is not the view of the local authorities arranging the contracts. They do not believe that the contracting system offers sufficient
regulation of the quality of care, to put into practice proper safeguards for the vulnerable elderly and disabled people who are receiving it in their own homes. Whatever one's view of the contracting arrangements, many thousands of people, particularly elderly people, are not covered by them. They purchase their community care directly from individuals or private companies, and in certain areas, particularly those with a large elderly population, a huge number of people, particularly elderly people, are buying that care without any element of protection or inspection whatever. There is no way of monitoring the relationship between the professional carer and the person who is paying money to that carer. That leaves the possibility of exploitation and abuse wide open. That could be plugged by a proper initial measure attached to the Bill, followed by much wider legislation covering everybody affected by community care.
Cities such as Bournemouth in the south of England and Harrogate in my part of Yorkshire have considerable numbers of elderly people, some with more resources than average. They are directly purchasing care and are wide open to exploitation. They deserve the protection of the House.
The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 was aimed at increasing the number of private sector providers of care. The Government believed that increasingly local authorities would become enablers rather than direct providers. Since the implementation of that Act, there has been a marked reduction in the number of local authority home carers and a marked increase in the number of private sector home carers--but they are unregulated, unregistered and uninspected private companies.
I have calculated that during the first year following the community care changes--1992 to 1993--the number of households receiving care services from the private sector increased by 47 per cent. That is a marked increase in private sector involvement in the provision of community care. I am not saying that all private sector companies provide poor-quality care. However, I am concerned--and the private companies share my concern--that there should be, in the interests of those private companies, a proper registration and inspection company to root out the small number of people who should not be involved in the provision of intimate, personal care in the privacy of people's homes.
The Minister may remember that on 24 March 1992, before he joined the Department, I introduced a Bill under the ten-minute rule procedure to provide for the registration of domiciliary care agencies. That Bill had cross-party support and included among its sponsors the hon. Members for Mid-Kent and for Chislehurst(Mr. Sims). The Bill was given a Second Reading by 188 votes to one--the one being the hon. Member for Chorley(Mr. Dover), who has still to explain to me why he voted against it. I think he was late back from his lunch. Unfortunately, the Bill was subsequently blocked, but I have reintroduced it and it is due for its Second Reading in July.
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