Care Bill [HL]

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I will speak primarily to Amendment 88, in the wider context of Clause 9, and put an idea to the Minister that dawned on me during conversations with local authorities that are faced with problems in this area. Clause 9 deals with the assessment of an adult’s needs for care and support. It states:

“Where it appears to a local authority that an adult may have needs for care and support, the authority must,”

carry out an assessment. The clause goes on to list what the assessment must include. Amendment 88 would add,

“housing options to contribute to the achievement of those outcomes”.

What struck me as an outsider looking into these matters is that, irrespective of the changes to which the noble Lord, Lord Rix, referred, problems still arise where elderly people—perhaps in their 80s, 90s or whatever—have to transfer out of their homes, which they may well own, or from hospital into some kind of care environment, perhaps a nursing home. I wonder whether it would be possible for that process to be made more seamless in circumstances where a local authority took on the responsibility of marketing—I shall come on to what I mean by “marketing”—the home for sale, clearing the home and making all the arrangements for the transfer of that resident, be it from their home or from hospital, into a care environment.

It may be that a local authority could offer a package. At the moment, that package, in part, is offered by some of the charities. I have spoken to charities, such as Age Concern, which carry out various components in this process of transfer but I wonder whether money could be raised by local authorities through taking a proportion of the commission on the sale of properties by estate agents. In other words, a local authority would advertise within its area and estate agents could tender for the right to handle the properties for which the local authority took responsibility in this process of seamlessly transferring people from their homes to a caring environment.

As estate agents would not necessarily know whether they would get that business if it was organised in the wider market, if they knew they were going to get all the business provided by the local authority—in other words, that they would be the estate agent responsible for carrying out the process of transfer in a particular district—they might be prepared to share their commissions with the local authority because they had access to business which they might not otherwise have had. It would provide a revenue stream.

As we introduce amendment after amendment to the Bill, I keep thinking, “Where is the money coming from?”. It has to come from somewhere. It is all right Parliament passing legislation placing all these new responsibilities on authorities but, at the end of the day, the local authority has to find a way of raising the revenue. If local authorities could somehow attach themselves to the revenue from the sale of houses, it might well provide an income stream—and what better way to do so than to provide a package for the seamless transfer of the elderly into a more caring environment? I put it simply as a proposition that the Minister might wish to consider over time.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, everyone supports these amendments. I do not wish to detain the House but I would like to add my voice to that support.

When I became a councillor in 1973, it was my duty to concern myself with the housing problems of constituents who lived in my ward. After seven years, when I became a Member of Parliament, I thought the housing problems would go to the councillor who took my place. That was not the case. Right up to my last week of being a Member of Parliament, I was still receiving housing complaints and problems. I recall in another life, when I was a member of the Labour Party, some of my friends saying, “Education, education, education”—that was the motto—but I said there should be something else: “Housing, housing, housing”.

If people do not live in decent homes, they will not be able to do anything. If dampness is coming down the walls, the brightest child will never be able to study properly and get the best out of his or her education. So I say to the Minister that sometimes it is the simple things that matter in housing, not the expensive things that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has referred to.

I have mentioned dampness. There used to be a great deal of dampness in some of the houses in my area of Glasgow. A scheme was introduced—all credit to the Government, as it was not just the local authority —to bring in central heating. What a difference it made to the health of the young and old who lived in those houses. They could get up in the morning to a warm house and go to bed in the evening in a warm house. It meant that bronchitis, emphysema and all the other problems were greatly reduced.