Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Emerton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Best. I also support what my noble friend Lord Rix said about closing the large institutions and providing the necessary housing. The reason the necessary housing could be found, either through charities or local authorities, was that it was clearly spelled out in government policy. I therefore strongly support the need for this provision to be in the Bill. Without that background, I would have found the job of closing two large institutions extremely difficult, because there was resistance from local authorities and local communities to providing suitable accommodation. However, as it was government policy, we were able to persuade and influence the local authorities to do it. Therefore, I support the amendments in this group.

[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.