Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. In our debates, both in Committee and on Report, we spent a considerable time talking about some of the complexity of the decisions that have to be made when it comes to the financial affairs of many people who require long-term care. In our debate on Clause 4, we talked about the need for regulated financial advice, because these issues are so complex. It is quite likely that people who are providing information to a local authority will make slip-ups. The kind of forms that have to be filled in can be very difficult. Clause 67(4) states:

“Where a person misrepresents or fails to disclose (whether fraudulently or otherwise)”.

That does seem a very wide definition of when a local authority can demand sums. My noble friend has come up with a compromise. He has tried to narrow the circumstances in which a local authority can require sums to be paid back to that authority.

I understand the concerns of the Government. They believe that completely to change this would lead to some perverse incentives in that people would deliberately give false information. My noble friend has met those concerns with his amendment because he has clearly drawn a distinction between fraudulent activity and claims, and slips and mistakes which are inevitably going to be made. Even at this late stage, it would be helpful if the noble Earl could reconsider this matter. I think my noble friend has put his finger on an important matter here. We are talking about very vulnerable people who will find the information required to be given to a local authority very complex. We need to make sure that we are as sympathetic as possible to those people.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to address the one word “otherwise”. I come under that category of otherwise. Since arriving in the House—let me see now, when was it? I am getting quite old; I can put the wrong statistics down on pieces of paper. Yes, I think it was 2011. I have in the course of the time since then turned up at the House on the wrong day. I got it wrong—not deliberately, not fraudulently, but for “otherwise” reasons—because I am old. I forget to have my post redirected during the Recess and come back to a mountain of post which I have not been able to answer, all because I get the dates wrong. That is because I am old.

As people get older, life gets more threatening. The bureaucracy weighs down on us more and we are frightened of authority. That is why I choose to support my colleague in—which amendment is it? Yes, Amendment 120.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, it occurs to me that the problem has been created by the use of the word “fraudulent”. It tends to suggest that the word “otherwise” is in some way connected with that. I wonder whether one could not take out that whole phrase in brackets. The idea is that, because of some mistake, something extra has been paid out. Ordinarily, it might be perfectly all right to recover that. You do not need to look into the detail of why it was wrong. The person in question—vulnerable people particularly, and those who are not so vulnerable, more recently arrived—may fall into error. The error may result in extra payments out by the local authority which, in ordinary circumstances, it should be able to recover. “Fraudulently” gives an idea of people trying to put something over on someone, and “otherwise” tends to be coloured by the same adverb. Perhaps this problem could be dealt with in that way.