Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I rise only to ask a question. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Lipsey, that a deferred payment scheme was an important selling point for the Dilnot report. Even though very few local authorities are running such schemes at the moment, it is an important and live issue in the minds of older people and their families; it is one that they dwell on quite a lot. I want to ask the keeper of the Dilnot tablets—who is not a character from Harry Potter—whether the commission gave any consideration to setting a figure as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. Did it have a level of assets in mind that people should be able to exclude?

When the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talks about a scheme, is it a model that would apply to individuals or is it really a model that would apply to local authorities and their ability to carry the costs of the Dilnot scheme in their area for a defined period of time? I can see what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is saying in terms of having a model, but I am slightly confused about it. Perhaps when the Minister comes to reply, in telling us about the Government’s thinking on all of this, he might address what to me appears to be the key underlying factor.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendment 77 and to ask the noble Earl whether his department has actually looked at the legislation that protects children to see whether this is in line with that legislation.

My child protection legislation knowledge and expertise are a bit rusty but the basic rule of child protection is that you see the child in their home environment. That is rule number one. If you look at many of the cases that have hit the headlines after going wrong, it is due to a failure to secure entry early on in the proceedings to see the child in their home environment. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has highlighted a very important issue. I am still struggling to understand why the Scots and the Welsh think it is important to retain this kind of approach but we in England do not. There does not seem to be a consistency of purpose across the borders.

Lastly, with regard to neglect, if you look at the data on child protection, I think the fastest growing area in which courts are authorising care orders and approving care proceedings for children is neglect. We should not shy away from the fact that when times are hard this may be a growth area. I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has included abuse and neglect in her amendment.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, particularly on Amendment 77 about powers of access and entry. She and I were both there at the birth of Action on Elder Abuse, which grew for a reason: people had identified and begun to codify the many different forms of elder abuse.

I absolutely sympathise with what the noble Lord, Lord Rix, is trying to do. Indeed, I had the same thought myself but I will defend the Bill by saying that other forms of abuse—physical, sexual, whatever—are set out in different pieces of legislation. What this Bill does is define financial abuse for the first time. That is really important because we know that very many older people are financially abused by relatives and until now the financial services industry has been pretty hopeless about dealing with it. That is why that is there.

A power of access is important precisely for the reasons identified by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. What we are talking about here is the right of a social worker with a police escort, having got permission via a legal document, to go into somebody’s house, where there is a suspicion that criminal activity may be taking place. That is the magnitude of what we are talking about.