Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Baroness Wilkins

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and the noble Lord, Lord Low. The noble Baroness has been very keen in pursuing these issues for the past five years and her tenacity has been outstanding. I am sure we all recognise that. She has argued comprehensively and excellently for these amendments. We all know that there is huge stress in moving home and, if you are a person in need of care, that stress is beyond words. As the noble Baroness said, it is a monumental risk. I hope that the Committee will wholeheartedly support these amendments.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, on her amendments and on her persuasive advocacy in this area. We debated the issue of equivalent services at Second Reading and the noble Earl said in his response that he felt that when people move from one local authority to another their circumstances are, in many cases, likely to change and that after a move it would not always be appropriate for them to have services equivalent to those that they had before. However, the noble Baroness has answered this point—her amendment has moved on—and she is not asking for an equivalence of services but an equivalence of outcome. That is a very important difference that noble Lords ought to mark. It is a persuasive case. Of course it is not possible to say that a new local authority must provide exactly the same services in the same way, but it must be right to strive to ensure that the outcome for the person who has moved is the same. I have a great deal of sympathy with her amendments and support those which are designed to ensure a smooth transition.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, made an interesting contribution in relation to ordinary residence and the number of disputes that currently arise in relation to it. As he said, Clause 38 and its associated regulations are welcome. However, he is surely right to seek to ensure that the regulations give absolute clarity and I would welcome the Minister’s reassurance on that.

I welcome the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. He should not feel inhibited from intervening in Bills which he thinks apply only to England. His experience is welcome and I hope that he will continue to take part in our debates at future stages of the Bill. I have always found cross-border issues complex. No doubt the Minister will now move many amendments to deal with the issue. However, the substantive point is that, as the four countries of the UK seem to be going their separate ways in relation to health and social care, it is important that we ensure that people moving to and from different parts of the UK are able to do so without a gap in services. In that sense, I welcome the noble Lord’s intervention.

My Amendment 92ZZADA is concerned with the circumstances of carers in relation to a move from one authority to another. Essentially, the amendment requires the second local authority to provide a written explanation where the cost to the second authority of meeting the carer’s eligible needs is different from the first. That explanation should be provided to the carer, the adult needing care and any other person to whom the carer asks the authority to provide an explanation. I am seeking to mirror for the carer the requirement contained in Clause 36(10) to explain the difference in the cost of meeting the eligible needs of an adult when they move from one authority to another.

Perhaps I may probe the Minister about what would happen in a scenario where a carer receiving local authority support moves to a new local authority area but the person receiving care does not. Does the Bill cover this situation? Would a review of the support plan of the carer and the care plan of the person being cared for be triggered? Essentially, on the issue of portability, I want to ensure that the circumstances relating to carers are as well understood as they are to the person making the move. If the Minister cannot specifically respond to that point, perhaps she will write to me between now and Report stage.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Baroness Wilkins

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Low, to the Minister for all his time and the concern that he has given to this issue. I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, in his amendments and hope that the Minister will meet his concerns and satisfy him fully.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I, too, warmly thank the Minister for bringing his amendment. It certainly shows that he has listened to the House and we are grateful. I also support the noble Lord, Lord Low. He raises important issues in relation to JR and I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond positively.

I should like to raise a further issue on this group of amendments which relates to SEN funding. It arises from the potential decline in the ability of local authorities to fund support services for SEN pupils which would result from an increase in the overall number of academies.

At the moment, local authorities retain a proportion of funding related to the number of schools that they maintain for the provision of central services, including those for special educational needs. While the overall level of funding within a local authority area may well not fall as a result of this process, the reallocation of resources away from local authorities to individual schools can have potentially significant effects for children and young people with SEN.

We widely accept that the provision of special educational needs support is at the most expensive end, or at least the more expensive end, of the educational spectrum. A key feature of local authority provision is that it allows a local authority to ensure that finite resources are spent effectively through the ability of the local authority to generate economies of scale.

This matter will come up later in Amendment 21, to be moved by my noble friend Lady Wilkins, on low-incidence SEN. However, it actually raises a more general issue of principle. In the letter that the Minister circulated to us and to my noble friend, he states that academies are able to buy in SEN support services from their local authority, from neighbouring local authorities or from other providers. I understand that principle, but I ask him to reflect on the circumstances. Because there will clearly be no requirement for an academy to purchase services from its local authority, current services might be at risk. In particular, the expertise that individual local authorities have established might not be available to academies, because resources are no longer there to support it. There is also a risk that the provision of SEN support on an individual school basis might be more expensive than that which could be accessed by the local authority.

The noble Lord may say that the problem will not arise, that essentially he is proposing a market-based solution and that because of that the combination of academies making their own decisions will ensure a satisfactory outcome. I should mention again my NHS experience, because what is happening here is very much in parallel to the decentralisation that has been undertaken in the National Health Service. My experience has been that in that process specialist services can actually lose out and that if they do, the Government have to find some mechanism for intervention to make sure that those specialist services, as a whole, continue to be provided. I give advanced warning that I will raise this again in the debate on my noble friend’s amendment. It would be useful to have some indication from the Government that they understand the issue and that there is a mechanism by which they can deal with it. If the noble Lord had accepted my suggestion that a statutory duty of partnership might be laid on all parties, that might have been one way through.