Social Care (Local Sufficiency) and Identification of Carers Bill

Debate between Hywel Francis and David Nuttall

Friday 7th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I feel that there is a danger that some of the content of the Bill may cause scarce resources to be diverted from front-line services to carers for the purpose of the production of assessments, surveys and strategies, rather than providing real, genuine help for those who need it most.

[Dr Francis]

If we take the hon. Gentleman at his word—and I do take him at his word: I believe that he is genuinely concerned about carers—it must be said that he has posed a series of very valid questions. Is it not time for him to allow the official Opposition to express their view, and, more important, to allow the Minister to respond to those questions? Should he not end his speech now?

[Mr Nuttall]

We are less than halfway through the time allocated for the debate, which did not begin until after 9.45 am. I do not think that there is much danger of our not being able to hear the views of Front Benchers. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are plenty of things that we want to hear from those on the Opposition Front Bench. I am particularly interested to know why, if this measure is so important, the Labour party did not present it in the form of a Government Bill during the 13 years in which it had the opportunity to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that intervention. I appreciate that a pilot cannot be done in the same way that the Government could have done it, but as we have already heard this morning, there are many initiatives going on in local authorities throughout the country, and I am sure that it would have been possible for one local authority to have picked this up and trialled the Bill to at least give us some idea, or put some information before us this morning, of the likely cost, even if it was a matter of someone sitting down and trying to work it out for themselves. There will inevitably be a substantial cost.

[Dr Francis]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened carefully to what I said he would have heard that Carers UK has piloted something similar in Conservative Kensington and Chelsea and Labour Islington. There is good practice everywhere. What about the actual saving to the taxpayer from the tax take as a result of people going back into work? We are not talking about costs here, but about savings to the Exchequer.