The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Jonathan
Shaw): In common with Committee colleagues, it is also my
pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr.
Amess—I have never heard a Member say anything else. That will
stand me in good stead.
I thank the
hon. Member for Forest of Dean for the amendment. He is right to probe
and I welcome the spirit in which he chose his words. I shall provide
details of why we are not including children at this stage, but first I
shall answer a question immediately. The hon. Gentleman referred to the
pilots that DCSF is undertaking, and working closely with it during
those pilots, DWP will test the alignment. I shall talk about that
shortly.
We are
committed to extending choice and control to disabled people, which
includes the empowerment of disabled children, young people and their
families. The DCSF pilots will begin soon, and their evaluation will
seek to establish whether individual budgets enable families with
disabled children to exercise more control and choice over the delivery
of their support packages. It will also examine whether individual
budgets improve outcomes for some or all disabled children and their
families. The pilots will tell us which services and funding streams
are suitable for inclusion in individual budgets for
children. Disabled
children cannot exercise the same direct user control as many disabled
adults. They have different needs from adults and access different
services, which are provided under a different statutory framework.
That is why a specific children’s pilot is required—to
determine how best to ensure that the appropriate services are
developed to meet children’s needs. There are also issues about
how children’s rights to individual budgets interplay with the
rights of parents, and how those rights interact with provisions in
children’s legislation, so it is neither timely nor appropriate
to introduce legislation before those issues have been explored
further.
Mr.
Harper: I am grateful for that outline. I am not sure
about the language, but the hon. Gentleman’s Department has
decided to call its pilots trailblazers. In one sense I welcome that,
because it implies that the Department is committed to rolling out
individual budgets, as it explicitly stated in the White Paper. The
pilots—the trailblazers—are designed to work out how best
to do so, and the commitment to do so is clear. I am not sure from what
he said about DCSF, however, whether that Department has taken the
decision in principle to roll out individual budgets because the
evidence is clear that pilots deliver significant benefits and the
pilots will test how best to do so, or whether the pilots will test
whether or not the Department is going to roll out individual budgets.
His Department’s commitment is clear, but is DCSF’s
commitment equally clear in principle? If so, is it simply testing how
best to deliver those individual budgets?
10
am
Jonathan
Shaw: The Government have made a commitment to devolving
choice to the individual regarding services, but to answer those
questions fully one needs to make an assessment—hence the
piloting. There are different sets of legislation on the different
issues of parents’ responsibilities and children’s
rights. If we were to set our face and say, “This is how
it’s going to be,” before the outcome of those pilots or
trailblazers—whatever fantastic word we want to attach to
them—the hon. Gentleman might accuse us of having an
ideology without having worked out how to do things. We need
to understand those complexities, and we are fully committed to doing
so.
My colleagues
and I have set out our ambition many times, and I know that the hon.
Gentleman shares that ambition. It is also welcome to people who depend
on services and who want to be empowered by being in control of care
and support services as well as services that support them in work or
other aspects of their lives. He is right to talk about that transition
period between childhood and adulthood, and I know that my colleague,
the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member
for Corby (Phil Hope), is working on that aspect at the moment. It
seems to be one of our biggest challenges to get that policy right. It
is sometimes frustrating, as a Minister, tying up different Departments,
and it is frustrating as a constituency MP to see that two different
departments in a local authority area do not always talk to one another
as they might to serve our constituents’ needs. We are
committed to piloting this matter. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of
and will support, I am sure, Aiming High for Disabled People, into
which we are putting additional resources. Indeed, the Aiming High for
Disabled Children programme has allocated £1 million in 2009-10,
and £1 million in 2010-11, to cover the costs of individual
budget pilots for disabled children. So we are putting resources in, as
well as having ambition, but we need to establish what
works.
Mr.
Harper: I am grateful to the Minister for setting out
clearly the Government’s ambition. This is a probing amendment,
as I said, and I am pleased that he has outlined the commitment of his
Department and the DCSF to work together closely on the way in which
these benefits are delivered to families, and on ensuring that, where
required, the services provided to disabled children can move
seamlessly into those provided to adults. Given those assurances, I beg
to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Paul
Rowen: I beg to move amendment 71, in
clause 28, page 36, line 41, at
end insert— ‘(1) When P is
exercising his rights under this Part the relevant authority shall be
subject to a duty to cooperate with
P.’. I,
too, welcome the measures in this part. As we heard in the evidence
sittings, where this approach has been applied to the caring services
in the local authorities that have taken it on board, it has liberated
many people and has considerably improved their lives. We strongly
welcome the measures that will extend that approach to disabled
people.
I should like
the Minister to clarify a few things before I discuss the specifics
behind this probing amendment. We welcome this approach and the pilot.
The work that has been done with the caring services shows that it is
key that the system is as simple and as straightforward as possible,
that it is person-focused and not target-driven, that it is responsive
enough to the varying needs of those with fluctuating health
conditions, and that people will be given accurate and accessible
information. I look forward to the pilot demonstrating those particular
aspects. Why
have I tabled amendment 71? If hon. Members consider clause 30, they
will see that it details the relevant authorities. In the amendment, we
are saying that where a person is exercising their rights under this
part of the Bill, those named authorities or people whose services have
been contracted to them have a duty to co-operate. We all know and can
quote examples from our constituency case load in which a particular
authority or even an official has a view on something and is not
prepared to give constituents what they are entitled to.
As I say,
this is a probing amendment that has been tabled because we believe
that it needs to be made abundantly clear to the authorities that they
have a duty to co-operate and that doing so is not an option. In a
sense, that will not be a problem in relation to the pilot
because the authorities will have been selected and will have agreed to
it. However, as the measure is rolled out some authorities may be
reluctant to participate. We believe that the cardinal principle that
they have a duty to do so must be
accepted. If
hon. Members read the briefing produced by the Royal Association for
Disability and Rehabilitation, although some of the issues that it
raises will be dealt with under the equality Bill, they will see that
one if its concerns is that particularly where there is public
procurement, some of the rights that have been hard fought for and are
beginning to bear fruit in relation to contracting out will become lost
in the overall noise. Through the amendment, we are seeking to make it
clear that the rights of a disabled person are enhanced not diminished
by the Bill, and that it is not an option for an authority to
participate or grant that person what they are entitled to. The
amendment is about liberating disabled people, not leaving them
hidebound by official rules and
regulations.
Mr.
Harper: I support the concept of the amendment but believe
that the hon. Gentleman has tabled his amendment to the wrong clause.
The clause effectively sets out the purpose of the part, and a much
better worded amendment is our amendment 45 to clause 31, which we
shall have the opportunity to discuss later. Our amendment achieves the
hon. Gentleman’s objective rather more elegantly. The theme of
the quality of Liberal Democrat amendments that is emerging this
morning is firming up nicely, so I will close my
remarks.
Jonathan
Shaw: Following that very modest comment, I am delighted
to respond to the hon. Member for Rochdale, and I thank him for his
amendment, which explicitly states that authorities must co-operate
with an individual who exercises his or her right to
control. If
it helps the Committee, the right to control creates a framework to
improve flexibility in the services that disabled people use. It will
do that through regulations that can place certain duties on public
authorities. The right to control will shift the balance of power from
the state to the individual and enable the individual to have a real
say in how best to meet their support needs.
Regulations
made under clause 31 can impose a duty on authorities to consult a
disabled person when preparing a plan to meet their assessed needs.
They can also empower an individual to require their authority to
consult them when revising their care plan and taking account of their
wishes. We have chosen to structure the clause in a way that empowers
the disabled person, giving their views and wishes full
consideration. The
intention is that the delivery of the right to control should be as
seamless as possible for the individual, so that authorities and
agencies will need to be aware of their obligations under the right to
control. It is therefore implicit in the duty to consult that the
result of the consultations should take account of the views of the
individual. The authority in question will have to co-operate with them
in order to reflect the person’s needs and wishes properly. We
expect authorities to be supportive in delivering their obligations, so
we will ensure that the requirements and expectations of the new right
are clearly communicated.
With those
words of assurance, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his
amendment. He was right to move the amendment, to seek assurances from
the Government, but it is about achieving a balance, about ensuring
that there is some autonomy and decision making locally—I am
sure he supports that for local authorities, and perhaps a little more
than I do generally, hence what I am saying about the
amendment—but also some for the individual. That is what we are
concerned about today, and what we are doing with the regulations will
get the balance about
right.
Paul
Rowen: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. As I
said at the start, the amendment was probing in nature, so I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Clause
28 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
29Relevant
services
Mr.
Harper: I beg to move amendment 24, in
clause 29, page 37, line 14, at
end insert— ‘(h) the
provision of care services and community care for
P.’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: amendment 25, in clause 29, page 37,
line 20, leave out subsections (5) and
(6). Amendment
70, in
clause 29, page 37, line 20, after
‘services’, insert ‘, unless
such exclusion would prevent P from achieving the matters set out in
subsection
(2)’. Amendment
49, in
clause 29, page 37, line 21, leave
out paragraph
(a).
Mr.
Harper: The clause defines the relevant services covered
by this part of the Bill, and what services the regulation-making
powers will
cover: “services...provided
to or for the benefit of a disabled
person”, who
in the Bill we call
“P”, “which
relate to...the following
matters.” The
list starts off well, laying out rather broad
matters: “the
provision of further education
for” the
disabled person and
their “higher
education...training...employment...continued
employment”, and
enabling
them “to
live independently or more
independently” at
home
and “to
overcome barriers to participation in
society.” That
is a very broad set of definitions, which would pretty much encompass
most services provided by
government. That
subsection went well, but unfortunately, further down the clause, which
is where the amendments come in, there are the main exclusions in
England and Wales. Some of them are around services provided to
children, which the Minister and I have already discussed in clause 28,
but the provision also excludes community care services and therefore
omits all of social care. Social care will be one of the significant
areas, important in enabling the disabled person to achieve almost any
of those matters. If we do not have adequate, flexible and responsive
social care, someone will clearly have barriers
to their education and issues about securing training, getting to work
and living independently. Excluding social care services leaves a big
hole. We
discussed the matter in the evidence sessions, Mr. Amess,
when your colleague was in the Chair. I probed the Minister then and
challenged him about the provision. He said that he did not want to be
too prescriptive and set out that there was already provision in other
legislation about individual budgets and direct payments for adult
social care. That is perfectly true, but there are problems in how such
things will work and whether the procedures and processes are aligned.
The Bill seems to look at things from the Department’s point of
view, rather than that of a disabled person. We should have one common
framework for accessing all the services, and potentially we should put
together all the funding streams and resources, so that they can be
directed in a way that suits
requirements. 10.15
am The
positive news that we heard during the evidence-taking session, from
one of the Minister’s officials, was that the Department did
plan to work very closely with a steering group, and with the
Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local
Government, in order to join up the pilots and subsequently when the
pilots are rolled out. My concern is that, if we exclude community care
services from this provision, we might regret it later. Were we to
remove subsections (5) and (6) and include social care services, we
could still specify in regulations the scope of pilots and how they are
rolled out. We should give Ministers the ability to include those
services, rather than restrict the scope of the regulations by
excluding social care services.
Amendment 24,
which the hon. Member for Rochdale has signed as well, would explicitly
include the provision of care services and community care for disabled
people, and amendment 24 would leave out subsections (5) and
(6)—the exclusion provisions relating to England and Wales, and
Scotland respectively. That would widen Ministers’ powers and
perhaps make it more likely that the Departments running the steering
groups will join up with the Department of Health, social care services
and local government. If we provide for that power, and if
organisations know that the pilots can be drawn more widely, it might
help to concentrate minds and engage local authorities in the running
of the pilots. That is the help that I seek to
provide. Other
organisations support widening the measures. For example, Leonard
Cheshire Disability, which is a very well known campaigning
organisation, is very supportive of the proposals in general, as we
are, but it would like assurances over the funding streams and how the
system will work in practice. It wants to know how the programmes may
differ and whether it would be possible to include social care payments
in the right to control. If we exclude from the Bill the ability to
include social care, we will tie Ministers’ hands later, rather
than leave those options open. It would be helpful if the Minister
could explain why the Government have chosen this route, in a little
more detail than he was able to during the evidence session. Does he
think that so splitting up the funding streams is helpful? Was there
any evidence from the pilots that the Government ran to lead one to the
conclusion that excluding social care funding from this right to
control process, and doing it separately, is an improvement?
During our
evidence session we heard from Liz Sayce, the chief executive of RADAR,
which is another well known, pan-disability campaigning organisation.
It, too, is very supportive of the direction of travel in the Bill, but
it is also very keen to know whether, after we have run the pilots and
rolled them out, disabled people can look forward to a system where
they can access all the support that they need via one gateway, where
everything is joined up and where they can look at their needs and
access one budget to cover the whole area of responsibility.
I would like
to put on the record one or two quotes from organisations that support
that approach. In its Second Reading briefing, Mind, which campaigns on
mental health services, stated that it
was “disappointed
that community care services are to be
excluded”. The
Equality and Human Rights Commission, in its briefing on the Bill,
pointed out that
“the provisions
in the Bill are limited in the scope...explicitly excluding
services relating to health and social care. This is in stark contrast
to the aspirations set out in the...Green Paper...The
Commission proposes that explicit exemptions such as that relating to
health and social care are removed from the face of the Bill and
instead that the Bill relies on...regulation-making powers to
extend (or remove) the right to control to different areas over
time.” I
have not spoken specifically to the Equality and Human Rights
Commission about my amendments. However, reading what it said in its
brief it appears to be endorsing amendment 25, which would leave out
subsections (5) and (6). It says explicitly that it wants those
subsections removed from the Bill, to give Ministers wider powers in
the regulation-making sphere, so that they can extend those powers at a
later date.
Similarly,
RADAR has looked at whether it would be sensible to take out those
exclusions in the Bill. Some of the work that it has done seemed to
show that legally that would be perfectly permissible. It would be
helpful if the Minister could set out the Government’s latest
thinking, subsequent to our evidence-taking sessions. If he wants to
leave these exclusions in the Bill, it would also be helpful if he
could give the Committee a little more detail about how exactly he
proposes to work them through in the pilot. Moreover, what happens in
the pilot if Ministers subsequently want to tie the right to control in
this Bill with social care services? Will this exclusion tie
Ministers’ hands in regulation-making powers, so that they
subsequently have to come back to the House to amend primary
legislation? If the Minister can reassure us about that issue, we may
not have to trouble the Committee with a Division on this
amendment.
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