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Ann McKechin: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. He is right that there is a degree of tension because providing a day care centre involves a built cost—the capital and revenue costs of maintaining the building—and if someone wants a service provided to them in their home, or at some other location that is not owned or controlled by the council, that balance will have to be struck. That is why we want the trailblazers and the consultation process to continue throughout that period, so that we can build a body of evidence to allow us to make appropriate judgments on what regulations might be required if it is rolled out throughout the country.
The clause means that an authority will be freed from its duty to make direct payments if those payments would impose an unaffordable burden on the service or support. The Bill’s framework ensures that we can clarify in secondary legislation and in guidance what could be interpreted as an unreasonable cost. We wish not to be too prescriptive in primary legislation, but to develop workable guidelines in discussion with public authorities and disabled people.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op): I seek to clarify this issue a little more, as I think we are dealing with two different issues. There is the point that the hon. Member for Forest of Dean made about the shift of services, and the implications for local authority services of moving money around, and there is the separate issue that any service provided by local authorities, if it were based just on people’s desires and needs, could ultimately overwhelm their budgets. Legislation, such as that covering community care, children and the matter before us, needs some protection to ensure that local authorities do not find that they are expected to pay for absolutely everyone’s wish.
Paul Rowen: I want to give the Minister an example to illustrate some of the tensions that could arise when the provision is applied more widely. A case in Oldham hit the national press, and I met the people involved. A direct payment holder and his wife decided that part of the money that was given to him would be used to employ a carer to take him to watch Rochdale football club on a Saturday.
John Mason (Glasgow, East) (SNP): Waste of money.
Paul Rowen: Some might say that. The press picked up on that and used it as an example of someone wasting public money. It was not. His wife had an afternoon off when she did not have to care for him. The carer who took him to the football match was not interested in it, but he wanted to go to it. When moving to direct payment, such issues arise and one person’s “reasonable” may be another person’s “unreasonable”. The press—I think it was The Sun—thought that that was unreasonable. I thought that it was reasonable, but that was not the media’s attitude.
Ann McKechin: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I have nothing against those who decide that retail therapy is better than going to a football match on a Saturday. The point is that carers are entitled to respite. That is the key element, not how the respite functions. There is a choice of how the respite is taken, but a carer who looks after someone 24 hours a day, seven days a week is entitled to respite. That objective incorporates the personal desires of the disabled person, their family and the people who care for them.
Mr. Harper: The person to whom the hon. Member for Rochdale referred was a guy called Gavin Croft, and I had the pleasure of meeting him when I visited Oldham metropolitan borough council to meet some of the people with individual budgets. Apart from questioning his judgment about which football team he supported, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, East did, the example was a good one of an agreed outcome, which was not the success of Rochdale football club, but giving his wife a respite break. That was the objective, and it was achieved at a much lower cost, so it was a much more effective use of finance than some other cases.
2.15 pm
Ann McKechin: I entirely agree with the conclusion reached by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean. Often, the alternative provision will be achieved at lower cost and will provide better quality. In turn, that will provide more funds for other areas of care that that person may want. Ultimately, that is our objective. We are trying to work in a way that gives us a basic framework that people know we are working within, and that, over the next few years, as the trailblazers start to succeed, allows us the flexibility to get into the detail of how this will operate in practice and establish how we are going to measure outcomes. It is not difficult in most cases to measure what those outcomes will be. An outcome where someone gets respite care that meets their individual taste is clearly more desirable that a one-size-fits-all approach. That is the aim of the Bill.
John Mason: Although I support the idea of more right to control—as other hon. Members do—does the Minister agree that it is a matter of balance? We need to consider the needs of the individual, but local authorities are under a lot of pressure these days and their budgets are tight. They are elected and have a certain amount of authority, so we have a duty to protect them from having their services chopped up into bits.
Ann McKechin: With the greatest respect, local authorities are there to serve the public who elect them and who reside in their area. The idea is to provide the best quality of services at the best value that can be reasonably obtained, using the services and skills of the many local authority workers, particularly in social care. The aim is also to work alongside voluntary organisations that operate within that area, and with disabled people and their families.
This is about achieving the best result for the taxpayer and the council tax payer in terms of level of service. Local authorities should not be afraid of that challenge or of co-operation. As hon. Members will be aware, in Scotland we have approached the matter in a somewhat different way in that, through the community planning partnerships, we are trying to get public agencies to work together in a better way and be more accountable to the people who pay for the services and vote for them. On that basis, I urge the hon. Member for Forest of Dean to withdraw the amendment.
Mr. Harper: We have had a good discussion, with a number of interventions. Certainly, from what the Minister has said so far, I am reassured that there will be some clarity about what unreasonable costs are in the regulations and guidance. It is welcome that the Minister recognises the tension that will inevitably arise as disabled people make choices about what services they want compared with what services are currently provided. That will be one of the clear lessons of the pilots. Indeed, as those pilots are run, it might be helpful to engage with the media and explain that people will make different choices and that there will be creative solutions.
The interesting thing about the case of Mr. Croft and his wife was that—I had not seen the report in The Sun that the hon. Member for Rochdale mentioned, but it was certainly covered in other national newspapers in much more balanced way—feedback from Mr. Croft, his wife and organisations indicated that this was a good way to achieve the outcome, and if the outcome is achieved at a lower cost than that of the official way of doing it, what is wrong with it? There was more balanced reporting of that case than I had thought might occur, so I think that we can be a bit more optimistic about the way that some of this might be reported. People are more open-minded than we might think when they consider what is successful and what is cost-effective, while remembering that it has to be for the agreed outcomes that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley correctly put her finger on.
With that useful debate and the reassurances that the Minister has given about the guidance and the way that the regulations will be made, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 32 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 34

Pilot schemes
Mr. Harper: I beg to move amendment 30, in clause 34, page 41, line 15, leave out paragraph (c).
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 31, in clause 34, page 41, line 20, leave out subsection (6).
Mr. Harper: I shall try to move through the amendments reasonably quickly, because we have discussed pilot schemes at the evidence sessions and in an earlier debate today. The clause provides for such schemes, making it clear that, under the previous clauses, Ministers can make regulations for a pilot scheme and time-limit it for a period not exceeding 36 months. These are probing amendments, and amendment 30 tests how the schemes will run and what we may learn from them.
Subsection (4)(c) defines whom the scheme applies to, and it can apply either to a geographical area or to a specific class of individuals. The provision that I seek to delete states that the scheme can be applied even more narrowly—to particular people by reference to prescribed criteria or on a sampling basis. One danger with pilot schemes is that if they are chosen to run in an area that is particularly hospitable to them, where all the local authorities, primary care trusts and other statutory bodies are gung-ho about making it work, it may be successful but that will not give us a realistic view of what will happen if we introduce it throughout the country, where those factors may not all hold true.
Furthermore, if we narrow too much the group to which the pilot applies, we may not fully see what will happen in the real world. For example, if it applies to a small number of people, other services, such as brokerage and advice services, are unlikely to arise, because there will be too few people to access them. Another problem is that if the local authority has a small number of people to whom the new provisions apply, but it still has to provide all its other services, it will incur the costs of parallel running.
What areas are the Government looking at for the schemes? Will they be only in areas where the local authority and other statutory providers are volunteers? That would be helpful, but it would not give us a very good impression of what might happen if we introduced the scheme throughout the country. The Minister alluded to the specified class as a person, and, to see what works, we must ensure that different categories of people are given the chance to use the services. For example, we want to ensure that the schemes cover a significant number of people with mental health problems and learning and other disabilities, so that, across the range of disabilities, we get a fair picture of what works, what does not and what might need to change.
Amendment 31 would leave out an objectionable aspect of the clause—subsection (6). The Minister knows from the evidence-taking sessions that I have some impatience with pilot schemes—perhaps it is just from being in opposition, and it will be knocked out of me in due course. I object to the fact that once a pilot scheme has been running for up to 36 months, it can be replaced by a further pilot scheme making the same or similar provision. I have a vision of perpetual pilot schemes—without our ever coming to a decision. If we are going to run a scheme, we should run it and then, at the end, or earlier if we have some clear data, make a decision. We should decide either that something does not work or is not practical and therefore stop doing it, or that we have enough evidence, on the balance of probabilities, to move forward—we should not have another pilot scheme.
The thing that pilot schemes miss, which we kicked around a little in the evidence sessions, is balance. It is right to make sure that, when we roll out a new system of anything, it is well designed and will work. Equally, we might have evidence, which we do from the pilots on social care, that that way of designing things has good outcomes for most people—it can deliver better outcomes at lower cost. There is a cost involved in running lots of pilots and not rolling the system out across the country for three or four years. The cost is for the hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of people who would be entitled to the new way of doing things, possibly giving them better outcomes at lower cost to the taxpayer, but they are prevented from doing so, because instead of rolling it out across the country we are running a number of pilot schemes.
While recognising that we need to get things right, we should also recognise that we have already piloted individual budgets between 2005 and 2007 on the adult social care side. Those pilots have been evaluated and the Department has the evidence. Certainly for working age adults, the evidence was clear. As the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, said earlier, there were some concerns and some issues raised with older people—in some cases the pilots were not entirely successful. However, there is a fair bit of evidence already that the stuff works, and that came through in our evidence session, both from Liz Sayce and Paul Davies.
The new pilots in the Bill will only commence in 2010 so, if they run for the full three years, we are looking at the system not even starting to be rolled out across the country in 2013. In the four years between now and then there will be many people who could have benefited who will be prevented from doing so. We need to have that at the back of our mind as we press to go further and faster. I know Ministers want to do that, but unless we push a little harder, we are in danger of never quite getting to where we want to be.
If we look at some of the other organisations involved, there is clear pressure from outside about making this go faster. Sue Bott, the director of the National Council for Independent Living, has said that the pilots would cause “unnecessary delay,” given the Department of Health’s piloting of individual budgets between 2005 and 2007. She said in a brief:
“I feel that if there’s an acceptance of the principle, then let’s get on with it and make it”
work.
“There’s enough information on the ground.”
Anne McDonald, programme director for community well-being at the Local Government Association, involved in the delivery of such services on the ground, said that there was a danger that people could feel “piloted out” and that the new pilots needed to be clear in what they set out to achieve.
When the Minister responds, she could set out—perhaps not in detail now—what the objectives of the pilots are, so that we could know when they have been successful. It would be helpful if the pilots in the clause could only run for up to 36 months—it would be interesting if the Minister could give us an indication of how long the Government expect pilots to run for, and an assurance that if, as those pilots are running, there is evidence early on about what works, there would be no necessity to run the pilot right to the end. Ministers should reserve the right to say, “We know what works, we know what is successful, so we are going to get on with it and do the job.”
The final authority that I would pray in aid would be the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which I mentioned in my remarks this morning. It stated that
“it is disappointing that the Bill”—
or the talk around it—
“only proposes that this will be piloted in 2010 in a small number of ‘trailblazing’ public authority areas.”
The EHRC clearly wants the process to go faster as well. I am sure that Ministers are keen for it to do so, but the key is getting the balance between caution and making it happen on the ground.
That is the essence of my amendments. In conclusion, I again quote Mr. Davies, when giving us evidence:
“I can well understand why people would want to feel the comfort of a pilot and see how that worked; I just do not agree with it. There is more than sufficient evidence to justify going straight ahead.”——[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 10 February 2009; c. 19, Q20.]
That is a man who has delivered such things on the ground. He is not a visionary in a think-tank, who does not have to make things work. He is the director of adult social care at an authority with a fifth of the national coverage of people with individual budgets, making this stuff work on the ground and delivering those services. He is clear that there is enough evidence to move ahead. Perhaps the Government could be a little more ambitious about the timetable.
2.30 pm
 
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