2nd reading in the Lords
- Speaker
Lord Ashley of StokeLabour- Quote
- My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time, in both senses—in the parliamentary sense of a Second Reading and in the sense that this is the second time that the Bill has been before the House. As noble Lords will know, it is the same Bill that was passed by this House last April. It was subsequently introduced in the House of Commons by Roger Berry but ran out of time there. The Bill is a high priority for those of us concerned with disability. I declare an interest as a disabled person, so there is a certain self-interest in this Bill being passed by both Houses. Those of us who are interested in disability issues intend to make them a high priority in this country. Without that we will get nowhere, but with public support we can make progress. We are determined that this Bill should become law. It may not happen now, but it will definitely happen. A Government who support the Bill will find themselves in good favour in the country. They have been warned that if they reject this Bill or do not bother with it, somebody else may take up the cudgels. I thank Caroline Ellis of the Disability Rights Commission for her magnificent help, work and support on this important Bill. I warmly appreciate it, as do millions of disabled people around the country. The Bill includes many things and all claims for it can be verified. It is a rescue operation for the victims of the worsening crisis in social care. It is a blueprint for the future, compensating for the many short-sighted policies and practices. It is a Bill that seeks to end the misery inflicted on disabled people and their families by an antediluvian system of care that is restrictive and inflexible. The need for reform grows more urgent every day. It is staggering that three-quarters of councils are now refusing to support people with moderate needs and at least four councils provide support only if the person would otherwise die. You have to be dying to get any kind of help from councils and, of course, if you die it is no help anyway. Three-quarters is an outrageous figure. Unless you are dying, you need not bother applying. Those are the facts in Great Britain. Without support, people are left to deteriorate, carers cannot work and families are put under strain. Pilots, reviews and warm words from Ministers are not what people want or hope for. They want a new law that gives them clear entitlements and guarantees them a chance to live an ordinary life contributing to their community. They hope that the Government will seize the opportunity offered by the Bill to bring about a real and lasting change. The House will listen with great care to the Minister who winds up. We are hoping for something that is positive, constructive and definite. Disabled people hope that the Government will seize the opportunity offered by the Bill to bring about a real and lasting change. If they do not, they must take the consequences, as we intend to make social care a high priority. I remind the House of the main points of the Bill. First, it provides a set of guiding principles for the delivery of public service support to disabled people. It would prevent the everyday abuses of dignity and autonomy that we see today. Nowhere in the existing pattern of community care provisions will we find any reference to choice, control, dignity or equality. Disabled people are as much entitled to those as anybody else, but social services departments routinely make decisions that contradict those fundamental values. The Bill would get rid of fragmented services and bewildering bureaucracy. It would place local authorities, National Health Service bodies and other key partners under a clear obligation to promote independent living. This goes hand in hand with greater strategic duties to co-operate and pool funds. Under this scheme, disabled people would be relieved of the nightmare of negotiating with a bunch of different agencies to try to get their needs met. The Bill empowers disabled people to assess their own support needs, supported by an advocate if they need one. This gives every disabled person the right to be told up front what resources they are entitled to and to plan their own support package. It gives people a real choice between managing their budget with practical assistance, placing it with a trusted person or organisation to manage on their behalf or taking statutory services in lieu of cash. These are important changes. Some councils only feed and clean, nothing else. In place of the insulting feed-and-clean-only approach, the Bill provides for holistic entitlements to support that extend beyond personal care. Disabled people would have clear rights to support for mental health and communication needs and for rehabilitation, as well as rights to support in bringing up children. These are things that the Government have pledged to deliver for disabled people by signing the United Nations disability convention. We thank the Government for that, but the catch is that they have yet to enshrine that in law. There is no point in saying how clever we are in singing the declaration if it is not legally binding, so the Government may be wasting their time if they do not pursue this further and make it mandatory. We want the law. I ask my noble friend the Minister, who I see is listening carefully, when disabled people can expect the Government to enshrine these provisions in law. It is a positive, constructive step, which I fully expect the Government to take without hesitation. This new framework provides for national minimum guaranteed entitlements so that postcode lotteries are eradicated. To make freedom of movement a reality for disabled people, the Bill provides for portable support packages. With these, disabled people can move from one local authority to another for jobs or family reasons without the uncertainty of having to undergo reassessment and renegotiate a support care package from scratch. That happens. People who want to move for any reason find themselves having to negotiate each provision with different local authorities. Imagine all those bureaucrats lining up to tell you what you can and cannot have. It is a nightmare. The Bill would definitely eradicate that. I hope that the Government accept that without any discussion at all. The Bill also fills the glaring absence in law of effective protection against unnecessary institutionalisation. This is an important point. It would be unlawful to institutionalise—a hell of a word, but you know what I mean—a person against their wishes or on grounds of financial expediency. For those in private and voluntary sector care homes, the Bill provides the full protection of the Human Rights Act. A decent home is at the heart of independent living. The Bill places a duty on local authorities to establish disability housing registers to ensure that they make more efficient use of existing adapted or accessible stock and provide disabled people with real choice. All new homes would be built to lifetime home standards and an appropriate proportion of new homes would also have to be built to full wheelchair accessibility standards. Although we have not decided on a proportion yet, we will eventually decide on an effective and reasonable figure. That is important. The benefits of the Bill extend not just to disabled people but to carers and whole families. The Bill would end the scandal of children as young as five carrying out adult support roles for their parents because the parents are so badly handicapped. That is a fact of life. Adopting this policy would free hundreds of thousands of carers to rejoin the labour market and enable women carers to find a way out of poverty and build up a decent pension. I assure Ministers and their advisers that I am well aware of their objections to the Bill. I do not seek to brush those objections aside, although I do not agree with them. After all, we are all on the same side in wanting a fair deal for disabled people without massive expenditure. However, that does not mean no expenditure. Nothing in this Bill can be accomplished overnight or implemented all at once. I recognise that and the difficulties facing the Government, but we must begin to make positive advances now. We can and must begin a dialogue on the contents, timing and phasing in of the Bill. If the Government seek to get away with a blanket refusal, they are heading for serious trouble, but if they begin discussions, we will be on our way, seeking sensible solutions to long-standing problems that are damaging disabled people and causing increasing difficulties for the Government. Those difficulties will increase enormously if the Government give negative answers to these requests. The Government have reservations about legislating for independent living. They say that they are not convinced of the need for new law. That is a ridiculous statement. They are surely aware of the leading community care law experts who say that the law is a dreadful mess. Even senior judges, the most cautious men in the world, express dismay at the law’s complexity and obscurity. All the major stakeholders in this debate, including the Local Government Association, believe that the time has come for root-and-branch reform. That is precisely what is required, not a bit of tinkering here and there, which the Government have been advocating for some time in the hope that they will not have to reform the law after this debate. Ministers have also expressed concern about timing. There is more than adequate evidence of the benefits and feasibility of key provisions for us to move ahead confidently. These, such as self-directed support, are just waiting to be implemented. Indeed, the message coming from all parts of the Department of Health—I know that my noble friend the Minister is not from that department—to local authorities appears to be, “Please get on with self-directed support and individual budgets”. However, the Government are not providing the necessary duties or legal framework, so I hope that they will change their mind on that. If the Government deny the need for urgent reform, this will become a long battle of attrition between us. However, I hope to elaborate, perhaps in Committee, on what I think would be a workable timetable for implementing the Bill. It cannot all be implemented at once; I recognise that there must be a staged process. That is particularly important, as it will be implemented in the context of the current, extremely tight financial settlement. I recognise the Government’s difficulties on that. We cannot work miracles overnight, but I hope that we shall start with miracles and move on to the major miracles. As I said, if the Government deny the need for urgent reform, it will become a long battle of attrition. I hope to get together with the Government to discuss the tight financial settlement that they are faced with and the way forward. I am glad that the Minister is listening to this because cost is a crucial element for the Government. They have failed to deliver the kind of investment for which people are screaming out in social care. The Comprehensive Spending Review was a bitter disappointment. Apart from some positive pledges on short breaks for disabled children and their families and greater access to psychological therapies, there was precious little to rejoice in. A derisory 1 per cent increase in local government funding and a rise of just £190 million in adult social care funding from the Department of Health were announced. Frankly—and we need to be frank—the Government have failed to respond to the crisis. I have spoken for far too long, but I shall say that I hope that we may convince the Government of the benefits of investing in independent living. The Office for Disability Issues, an independent organisation, clearly understands those benefits and has done some excellent research showing the huge economic benefits of radically transforming the system. The money can be saved; it is there, if the Government act properly. The more we invest in independent living support, the bigger the economic savings will be as more people pay taxes and come off benefits and fewer people need acute healthcare. Why on earth have the Government disregarded this research? We do not need a massive injection of investment to get the reform process under way. The very process of transforming public service support for disabled people and their families in the manner set out in the Bill will free vital resources to tackle unmet needs. It is to some extent a question of redirecting resources to secure better outcomes for disabled people. Stakeholders interviewed for the cost-benefit study commissioned by the Office for Disability Issues suggested that no less than 20 to 30 per cent of social services expenditure is wastage because it goes on inflexible block contracts and inflated agency fees. If we tackled that by implementing the Bill, the savings would be in the region of a staggering £3.8 billion. That is the amount that Derek Wanless said would be needed to extend support to 450,000 older people. Similarly, the Government have estimated that reducing the rate of institutionalisation among older people by just 1 per cent would save a further £3.8 billion, so the Bill’s provisions would save money and make it available for the Government to use in different ways. I am sorry to have gone on for so long, but this is an important Bill. It is a blueprint for the future and will be acted on sooner or later. The sooner the Minister is able to act on it, the better for all concerned. I commend the Bill to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Ashley of Stoke.)
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Baroness Masham of IltonCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, on his unremitting pursuit over the years for better facilities for disabled people. I am sure all noble Lords will agree with the aim of the Bill that: “disabled persons enjoy the same choice, freedom, dignity, control and substantive opportunities as persons who are not disabled at home, at work, and as members of the community”. As a disabled person—I broke my back in 1958—I must declare an interest. I was married for 46 years to a wonderful husband who had many serious health conditions in the last 11 years of his life. They included diabetes, strokes, DVT in his leg, a bleed in his head, an embolism in his lung, Parkinson’s disease, a cancer tumour in his lower bowel and an open wound that had to be dressed twice a day. I therefore know only too well what support and help some disabled people need if they are to remain in their own home, which is the wish of most people. I shall restrict my remarks on the Bill to the clauses dealing with health matters, and I hope that the Minister will listen to some of our pleas that the Bill gives us the opportunity to air. Clause 7 is entitled: “Further duties of NHS bodies”, and it mentions palliative care services. They are still very patchy across the country. When my husband became ill with pneumonia, I had to deal with the out-of-hours doctor service. He started running a temperature, and I dealt with three different doctors, all 26 miles away. One came out on Saturday and prescribed an antibiotic. As my husband had difficulty swallowing, we had to chase from chemist to chemist to find one that had it in a liquid form. On Sunday, my husband was worse, and I telephoned again. It was hours before the doctor telephoned back; the out-of-hours vet service would have been much quicker. By the afternoon, my husband had to go to hospital, and he died in the A&E department of Harrogate General Hospital. For seriously disabled people, this must be improved. The NHS is very fragmented. I know it is better in some parts of the country, such as Cambridge where, I am told, seriously at-risk ill patients are put on a register so that the out-of-hours doctors know about them. This is something that PCTs could improve greatly. In my husband’s case, there was no way for the hospital to get his notes. I mention that as I want it improved so that other people do not to have to go through what I went through. My fear is that as PCTs cover such large areas, the service will get even less personalised and more fragmented. Last week, I attended a conference on cancer where I heard about the hopeful development of community palliative care in Lincolnshire, but it is a drop in the ocean. Clause 5(1) states: “It shall be the duty of each local authority and each NHS body in carrying out their functions to promote independent living for disabled persons”. I bring to your Lordships the most worrying Department of Health proposals on Part IX of the Drug Tariff: cuts in patient services and reduced access to prescription products. As the president of the Spinal Injuries Association, I can say that this is a concern of many of our members, and of many people who have had or have cancer and have to use catheters and stomas. These are essential products. Specialist products allow NHS patients with complex conditions to lead a near-normal life and maintain their independence. Appliance users can continue to work and contribute to society. Access to advice via specialist nurses and telephone helplines is vital to support patients’ self-care, as promoted by the Government. The Department of Health’s proposals will lead to the withdrawal of large numbers of specialist appliances. People who have used specialist products to live independent lives for many years will face distress and disruption if their prescribed product is withdrawn because of price cuts. The department proposes to place a cap on the number of specialist nurse visits and stoma customisation which will be funded. This is a very small service that can help so many, and to cut it is ridiculous. The services ensure that patients are provided with the right product, which is individually tailored. If this is halted, clinical complications or infections may arise with serious implications for patient health and NHS resources. The saving that the department is trying to make is a tiny proportion of the total NHS budget and the overall savings target, but the most vulnerable patients will suffer. Patient groups, healthcare professionals and the industry have expressed serious concern about the impact of the department’s proposals. They urge the Government to ensure that their proposals do not lead to products being withdrawn or services cut back. Many of these products are provided to patients in their own homes by the home delivery service. That is a most useful advantage to everyone concerned. I ask the Minister to help some of the most disabled service users in this matter. The department’s plans are laid out in a review document that is out for consultation until the end of December—this month. As many of our paralysed members get older, there are increasing difficulties in shoulder and wrist movements, with overuse. There are increasing difficulties with bladder and bowel and the skin gets thinner and more vulnerable. They need more help to continue to live independently. Many disabled people are very much at risk when they have to be treated in hospital from picking up infections such as MRSA or Clostridium difficile. I personally know two people who have been in hospital in the past year and have both had C difficile and MRSA. One is the brother of one of your Lordships. He has had cancer and it is a miracle that he is still alive after having had MRSA and C difficile twice. Neither of those people is old. The Bill is intended to allow disabled people to enjoy personal dignity. It should be everybody's aim to strive for this. When one hears of patients being treated roughly by nurses or care assistants as they are moved in agony while in hospital, one wonders whether the nurses know about TLC. When food is left and taken away because nobody has ensured that the patient is fed, when fluids are denied to a thirsty patient, when patients are left for hours in a soiled bed, when nurses talk over patients, where is the dignity? When nurses are more interested in planning their nightlife than talking to their patients, it is put down to the modern generation, but with more hands-on training and supervision by dedicated sisters, we could have better nurses. Too many sisters have been submerged in administration, which could be done by ward clerks. Patients, especially disabled ones, should not have to suffer with swallowing difficulties. The discharge of disabled patients from hospital should be well planned, not left until the last minute. Perhaps the national framework for NHS continuing healthcare and NHS-funded nursing care will help in this matter. The Bill encompasses such a diversity of people with all sorts of disability, and impairments. I am so pleased that it stresses choice as one of its priorities. Where there is choice, one is most likely to get a good standard of care and support. I am not sure that this will be easy to achieve in some rural areas, but there is a great deal to aim for. The existing system does not provide rights to portable support. If you move to a different part of the country, you have to start all over again and negotiate a new care package from scratch. As provision is so patchy across the country, with a postcode lottery still in place, I can see why that happens. As I find that mental illness can be difficult and patients can be a danger to themselves and others, I ask the Minister: do people with mental health problems have no right to assessment or treatment and support for their mental health needs? A high proportion of mental health service users are denied an assessment for social care services unless they reach a high initial threshold of serious mental ill health. If they are denied an assessment, how can that be proved one way or the other? I do not understand that and I hope that the Minister will explain it. The Bill is giving much food for thought. I hope that, whatever the life of the Bill will be, it has already shown that there is a great deal to do if improvements are to be made.
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- 10:24
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Baroness Campbell of SurbitonCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, for more than 25 years now, I have been actively campaigning for disabled people to have the right to independent living and I wish that I had the lung power to regale the House with stories of how independent living has transformed disabled people’s lives, from watching daytime TV in the front room to becoming active citizens participating in their communities, accessing jobs and, indeed, speaking in the House of Lords. For those noble Lords who would like to know more, please—for those who like browsing the internet—just tap in “independent living” and “disabled people”. They will be amazed at what they read. I have also had the honour of working alongside the highly esteemed noble Lord, Lord Ashley, for more years than I can remember. In fact, I am his disability shadow. To participate fully in society as equal citizens, disabled people need their support to be safeguarded in a legislative infrastructure. The Bill provides such a mechanism. It is the perfect complement to the Disability Discrimination Act and the Government’s forthcoming independent living strategy. I am a trustee of the National Centre for Independent Living, an organisation that I co-founded with Frances Hasler and which is committed to the principles of the provisions of the Bill. The organisation has amassed much evidence showing that the independent living support that I enjoy and need to participate in this Chamber is a right denied to many citizens. It is not a right so much as luck: in where you live; in who assesses you; in whether or not you get the information that tells you about your entitlements; and in who supports you to get what you want. I recently had the great honour and privilege of chairing the expert panel on the Government’s independent living review. We advised the Government on how to realise the independent living aims of the 2005 Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People report. For nine months, we considered a range of measures that would help all government departments to develop strategies and projects to support independent living. We should not forget that independent living is not about eating, drinking and going to the toilet; it is about being supported to be an active, independent person in your community. People often forget that. It is not simply about social care but about everything the Government can offer to ensure that the public can contribute actively. The panel’s report will be available soon, I hope at the end of January. It is a good report and it certainly takes us in the right direction towards independent living. However—and there is a “however”—although the expert panel gave much evidence and argued for legislative reform, the Government felt that other routes needed to be tried first. I remain convinced that the evidence demonstrates the need for legislative reform. The current legal framework does not provide disabled people with the tools that we need to embed independent living in mainstream public services or to offer redress—the most important thing—when it is denied us. The Bill will provide the safeguards that we as disabled people need. It will also deliver significant results for other citizens, such as carers, who are mostly women but who include thousands of children, who are obliged to provide substantial support to families as a result of receiving inadequate levels of support or being denied it entirely. The Bill will further engender equality—caring undermines women’s opportunities. It will also allow the better use of public funds by cutting bureaucracy, by avoiding unnecessary spending in health services and on benefits, by securing greater returns from people in work and by prioritising substantial individual budgets. To be effective, individual budgets will require legislative reform to provide a single assessment process for joint funding streams. The Bill could deliver such a process. The Government have outlined three goals for next year’s adult social care Green Paper. The first is to promote independence, well-being and control. The Bill goes to the heart of that objective and will support it. It supports and progresses the Government’s prioritisation of personalisation, choice and control. It also promotes the Government’s public service quality agenda by emphasising accessibility, flexibility and respect for service users. It will also complement the equalities public service agreement set by the Government. The PSA prioritises choice. Its performance framework contains the means to monitor and challenge progress, but not for individual redress. People will still be told that they cannot have assistance for a bath. It is no comfort to them to know that their council may get a less positive performance assessment as a result. In closing, the Bill and the government agenda, including the independent living strategy, are complementary and vital to each other. I am convinced that the legislative reform of public service support is essential to ensure independent living for all disabled people. As someone who has been in the business for more than 25 years, I now know the route to disabled people’s emancipation, and it is Jack’s Bill.
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- 10:38
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Baroness GreengrossCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in this debate. I welcome the Bill and congratulate most sincerely the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on introducing it. It will empower disabled people in actions and decisions related to accommodation, care and payments, and will promote equality and human rights. I congratulate the Government on the work that they are already doing in introducing the new social care concordat and the independent living strategy, which we hope will be available very soon. The new social care concordat demonstrates the concerted effort to improve individual choice and support for disabled and many older people in a joined-up way, really for the first time. The noble Lord’s Bill will ensure that the reforms are stronger and available sooner, with more guarantees that people’s needs will not be ignored. Much in the Bill is very much needed. As the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, eloquently described, we must do something about the fact that a huge number of disabled adults still rely on care and support from a child or young person to the huge detriment of that young person’s needs and well-being. The recommendations in the social care concordat will enhance local autonomy. This is fine and very welcome, but we also have to recognise that lack of uniformity can create huge difficulties if a person seeking services lives in an area where services are of a low standard. National standards are essential to combat the lack of care so movingly described by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. The concordat, while excellent in itself, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Campbell, have said, offers no redress for an individual if his or her needs are not considered to be critical. Very often they are not met. This must change and I hope that the Government will look at the underlying philosophy which still tends to see low-level care as a short-term cost and, therefore, ignores early investment in preventive and lower-level care and support as unimportant. This should be seen as an investment which can prevent higher-level care, which is far more costly, later. This Bill would go some way to ensuring that this happens. The Government must also bear in mind that the concordat requires adequate investment in order to achieve their admirable goals, but a 1 per cent increase in resources in the next three years is recognised by Wanless and the Rowntree Foundation as inadequate when at least £2 billion to £3 billion is needed to achieve anything worth while. Independence is an excellent aim, which is fine, but it is not for everyone an end in itself. We have to ask many people what independence is for. What is it in order to do? Why does one want independence? For most of us, living means full social participation, self-fulfilment and freedom of choice. Most adults of working age gain that mix of self-fulfilment and independence, financial and social, through work, usually through a combination of income and social capital. Disabled people are no different from anyone else in that regard. So I ask the Government how people will be informed of their rights, responsibilities and choices in terms of employment and benefits if the new personal capability, and now in addition it appears skills, hurdles that are implicit if the Government’s welfare reform aims are to be successfully negotiated. How will this Bill interface with the Welfare Reform Bill and the equality and human rights agenda, which are very important to many of us, as exemplified in the recent single equality legislation proposals, another point I should like the Government to clarify? The Bill will ensure faster and stronger reform and guarantee to many individuals that their needs will no longer be ignored. These aspirations are surely worthy of our total support.
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- 10:47
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Lord BestCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on persisting with this excellent Bill and on giving us a chance to debate the key disability issues of today. I pay tribute to the three noble Baronesses who have spoken before me for their wonderful campaigning work on these issues over the years. I should like to address issues in Part 4 of the Bill relating to accessible housing. I declare my interest as chair of the Hanover Housing Association, which provides housing and care for 19,000 older people and has 16 local care-and-repair home improvement agencies under its wing. The issues of inaccessibility divide into two parts: accessibility for existing properties that need adapting to make them suitable for people with disability and mobility problems, and the building of new homes. If homes are inaccessible because of steps up to the front door, an upstairs loo or bathrooms that cannot cope with a wheelchair, people can become impoverished inside their homes, can be forced to move to expensive residential care or can languish in hospital unnecessarily when they want to be at home, while the hospitals need the beds. The adaptation of existing properties to make them accessible and the building of new homes from the outset need to be treated separately. In relation to adaptations, I congratulate the Government on abolishing the pernicious means test for the disabled facilities grant and, just a few days ago, increasing the resources available for this grant by some 20 per cent. I hope that the ceiling on the cost of any adaptations, currently £25,000, which no longer covers major changes to a property, may be raised soon. Will the Government assist local authorities in overcoming the long delays currently experienced by those waiting for occupational therapists to assess their needs and for the bureaucratic machine to pay these mandatory grants for adaptations? Home improvement agencies and care-and-repair and staying-put schemes are doing great work in organising adaptations to existing homes. I hope that the Minister will be able to report soon on increased backing for these excellent local organisations. New homes being built can be designed in ways that mean expensive adaptations later will not be necessary. In the final years of the 1990s, the then Minister for construction, Nick Raynsford, wisely and helpfully introduced new building regulations in response to the efforts of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and its partners which devised the lifetime homes standards for new housing. These revisions to Part M of the building regulations represented a huge step forward in making all new accommodation more accessible to those with disabilities, to young mothers with buggies, to teenagers with broken legs, to visiting grandparents with mobility problems and to the human race in all its many forms. It is far cheaper, and infinitely more satisfactory, to build homes that, with level thresholds, wider front doors, downstairs loos and the rest, are accessible from the day that they are built. We think that 3 million more homes will be built between now and 2020, and we need to ensure that they are all fully accessible. In the years since 1999, when the building regulations were revised, two issues have needed to be addressed. First, these new controls did not go the whole way to introducing the full lifetime home standards and further work was needed to implement the remaining elements. Secondly, knowing the problems in the construction industry, it was necessary to ensure that these new regulations were complied with by every house builder. In terms of extending the regulations to encompass all 16 elements of the lifetime home standards, some progress has been made on several fronts over the past eight years. The Greater London Authority, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive and a number of enlightened individual local authorities have incorporated into their planning policies the requirement to meet lifetime homes standards. The Government now hope, through guidance in their code for sustainable homes, to see these higher standards of accessibility adopted for all house building in the future. I hope that the Minister will update us on progress to that end. Using the planning system to require certain standards before planning permission is granted is not as stringent an approach as using the building regulations, which involve building control inspectors visiting sites to make sure that these measures have been fully complied with. The Government’s Building Regulations Advisory Committee—BRAC—has now completed its work in creating a British standard for accessibility, incorporating an updated, polished version of the lifetime homes standards. I understand that this is now ready to go. I should be grateful if the Minister could tell the House whether this further improvement to Part M of the building regulations is now to be taken forward. This leads me to my final point on new homes—the success of enforcement of the existing 1999 building regulations in relation to accessibility; and therefore later, I hope, the enforcement of enhanced regulations. In 2003 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published research from Professor Imbrie, which concluded that, “many developers and building control officers do not adequately understand the objectives of Part M of the Building Regulations relating to the accessibility of new housing. Indeed, the regulation is commonly regarded as ‘half-hearted’, and it is often poorly interpreted and variably enforced, leading to an unsatisfactory outcome for the design of new housing stock”. After the report was published, I asked the Minister then responsible, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, when Her Majesty’s Government intended to undertake a review of Part M of the building regulations, as revised in 1999. He replied: “My Lords, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has recently commissioned research to evaluate the impact of the changes to Part M of the building regulations, which concerns the accessibility of all new homes and was introduced in 1999. The work is expected to begin before Christmas and to report in about two years’ time”.—[Official Report, 15/10/03; col. 934 .] It is now four years since that statement. I hope the Government do not think that we have all forgotten the Minister’s very positive announcement in 2003. When will this review, now more than two years late, report so that we can then see what action may be needed to bring recalcitrant builders into line and ensure that these invaluable improvements in accessibility, secured by the Government, appear on the ground for the benefit of disabled people and for society at large? I heartily commend the Bill and look forward to the Minister’s response.
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- 10:53
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Lord Pearson of RannochNon-affiliated- Quote
- My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on his persistence and I support the Bill in general. I again declare an interest as the father of a daughter with severe intellectual impairment. If I have a doubt about the Bill, it is that it does not appear sufficiently to spell out and protect the position of the family carers of people such as my daughter and the needs of people who are even less fortunate and who are more intellectually disabled than she is. Noble Lords will be aware that there can be a good deal of tension between family carers and other carers. One of the roots of this tension seems to come from the many people and their representatives who are less handicapped than my daughter, who feel that their families are too controlling about their care and lifestyle. I and those whom I represent accept and respect their position entirely and we agree wholeheartedly that the conscious choice of those who are able to make such a choice should be fully met. But many thousands of people simply cannot make that choice. For those people, the views of their family carers, when they exist, should count very much more than the views of outside professionals unless there are clear and good reasons why that should not be so.
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- 11:02
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- Lord Ashley of StokeLabour
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- My Lords, the noble Lord’s point will be respected and discussed in Committee. We will do anything we can to meet that point.
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- 11:02
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- Lord Pearson of RannochNon-affiliated
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- My Lords, I am most grateful. I was going to propose that. It is in this context that I should again reveal that my daughter, who is now 27, is very fortunate to live in a Rudolf Steiner Camphill community, one of many intentional communities around the country. These communities are very much in demand among the family carers of our most disabled people, although they are not always wholly popular with local authorities and social services. That is unfortunate, because these communities are very care-effective and also very cost-effective, saving around £50,000 per annum per person over normal community care. They also allow people such as my daughter to live far more independently than they could under any form of care in the wider community outside. As my daughter said to me recently, “You see, I can help other people in the village”, whereas there are occasions when it is clear that she feels something of a nuisance at home, however much we can do for her. I hope that we can amend the Bill in Committee to give more encouragement and funding to family carers and to intentional communities. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, whose words I strongly support, I imagine that we will come back to the subject when we consider the Government’s new consultative document Valuing People Now. In the mean time, I would be grateful for any words of encouragement that the Minister can offer to the family carers of our most severely intellectually disabled people and to our intentional communities, which do such a wonderful job for our least fortunate people.
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Lord AddingtonLiberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, I made the crack several years ago on a disability matter that the usual suspects were queueing up to speak again. The noble Lord, Lord Ashley, is probably the very distinguished head of that queue. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, comes in with me as a new member of the line-up. Her speech encapsulates why this Bill, or something very like it, is needed. It is not that the Government are ill intended or that the bodies involved do not want to do this; they just do not do it—they do not co-ordinate. When you ask the Government to co-ordinate anything, they say, “We are co-ordinating. We have a group of people who meet together, talk and try to bring things together”. Then something happens—but not very much—and sometimes the Government forget what happened when the people who were brought together are no longer there and have moved on. Whether they are Ministers or officials does not matter; the process goes on. This is why most of us keep coming back and asking for a more solid structure, ultimately involving an Act of Parliament that brings everything together. We need something that says, “You shall do this”, not, “If you can, and it is your best intention, please do it now”. It should say, “You shall do this. There is a sanction if you do not. You have a duty to do it. Get on with it, please, now”. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman—
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- Baroness Campbell of SurbitonCrossbench
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- Lady Campbell.
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- 11:06
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- Lord AddingtonLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I am sorry. It comes from being a dyslexic, I am afraid. We make mistakes. The noble Baroness pointed out that the lucky and the brilliant get through the current system; it is that simple. It may be better now than it was—as the noble Baroness said, let us try to get it right for a second time—but we have to go further. The Government will tell us, quite rightly, that they have made considerable steps forward. They have, but so they should. On this issue, every Government and every Parliament can say that they have done better than the preceding one. The counter to that is, “And so you should. You should learn from mistakes. You should make sure that you do not commit the errors of the past”. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to new-build housing. It is much easier to incorporate the necessary facilities in new build and to get it right now because there will be no add-on costs. The London Underground system is a classic example. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, it has too many steps, which are inconvenient to everyone—a mother pushing a buggy or someone with an injured leg. A few years ago when I was on crutches for a few weeks, it was very much emphasised to me that the steps in the London Tube system are incredibly difficult for anyone with any form of movement impairment. Add a bag to the equation, and many Underground stations become almost impossible to get around. The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, calls for co-ordination of best practice leading to a situation where you have to do what is deemed to be best at the time. The comment of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about the best way forward for various groups within the disability community is an argument for setting up a framework to deal with this. The disability lobby is so multifaceted that you must effectively formalise informality; you must build in flexibility, but there must be an end point. We must try to get this right. Every time we make a mistake, to come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that effectively generates on-costs. If we do not provide the right support for carers, they will be taken out of economic activity. We all know this. It is absolutely accepted by everyone. If carers become economically active, that will help to balance the nation’s economy, as will getting more disabled people into work. The world of work is changing; often it involves not physical activity but mental activity. If you enhance the position of people with disabilities, many of them will be able to work and enhance the economy. There are savings to be made if there is investment up front. There are great bureaucratic dragons to be slain with this Bill. If the Government can show us that they are doing that anyway and that there is some form of enforcement to ensure that it is happening, we will go away happy. I will take considerable convincing, however, because usually at this stage we hear about a series of committees. Unless there is a driving force behind the committees and these new liaison groups, I am worried. Unless we tell people to do things, we will have not the old postcode lottery but a whole new one, albeit involving different and larger areas. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in reply to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Ashley, has shown the one true quality that anyone needs to change anything in Parliament: perseverance.
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Lord McColl of DulwichConservative- Quote
- My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on his amazing tenacity in fighting for a better deal for disabled people all round. My eyes were opened to the plight of disabled people when I was asked to chair a government committee of inquiry into services for disabled people some years ago. I found it difficult to believe that the services were in such a poor state. There was plenty of money but the management was fundamentally flawed. We made 49 recommendations to help disabled people, but the civil servants simply said, “We will bury your report”. I was astonished at their apparent lack of concern for disabled people. When we asked Prime Minister Thatcher to intervene, however, she soon straightened them out and almost all the recommendations were accepted apart from the vision for indoor/outdoor wheelchairs. That was implemented later, together with direct payments, for which we campaigned along with other noble Lords. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, mentioned, when severely disabled people have to rely on carers who come each day at a time that suits the carer, their lives tend to be rather chaotic and disorganised. However, when disabled people themselves have direct payment, they can employ the carers and have them come at a time that is essential to them, to enable them to leave home early and go to work. The recent announcement by the Government that they will extend direct payments and carry on their trials of individual budgets is certainly welcome. There are too many barriers preventing disabled people from accessing direct payments. The Disability Rights Commission recently emphasised that a subjective judgment made by local authority staff that a person lacks the competence to manage direct payments can preclude those payments, and there are too many restrictions on how they can be used. That is a polite way of saying that there are too many little bureaucrats sitting behind desks pontificating about subjects about which they know little. For instance, a young lady with a severe heart condition went to her GP for a repeat prescription. The GP said to her, “Mary, you’re really quite severely disabled”. “No I’m not”, she said, “I don’t recognise disability”. The GP said, “I’m telling you, my girl, you are severely disabled. You can’t walk up a hill and you’re pretty blue. You need, and are entitled to, a car, and you will get one”. She reluctantly agreed to that, but she encountered ridicule and disbelief on three separate occasions when she was told by a clerk sitting behind a desk, “You’re not disabled. You don’t need a car”. She had not even asked for the car. She was so angry that she nearly told them exactly what they could do with it. What sort of procedures are in place to minimise that kind of discrimination? Disabled people tend to conceal their disabilities when they can. For instance, that particular girl, Mary, used to get really quite angry when she held out her hand in a shop or to collect a paper and the other person would say, “Ooh, aren’t you blue?”. She learnt to squeeze her hand while she was waiting so that, when she held it out, it was white rather than blue. Disabled people do not like to be different from the rest of the population. As my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition has said, the Conservative Party welcomes the principles underlying the Bill. We are pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, has again introduced the subject, enabling us to discuss it again in detail. The Conservative Party is committed to introducing individual budgets so that people can take care of their own needs. Individual budgets would allow people to commission healthcare and social care services jointly for themselves, because they know better what they need. Prime Minister Thatcher was always very supportive of respite care, emphasising what a great contribution carers made and how we should do much more to support them. We are exploring means to give more support to carers, including through the tax and benefit system. Noble Lords may not be aware that it was Mrs Thatcher who emphasised the importance of disabled people by splitting the old Department of Health and Social Security into its two present component parts. She also changed the title “Minister for the Disabled”—disabled people do not like being called “the disabled”—to “Minister for Disabled People”. She said, however, “They’ll want to change the notepaper”, and they were allowed to use up the existing notepaper first. The provision of services for disabled people is uneven across the country, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Campbell, mentioned. How do the Government plan to deal with that? There seems to be no system in place at the moment to cover a disabled person who moves to a different part of the country. They often have to start from scratch to renegotiate a new care package from a variety of different sources. The Bill is designed to ensure that they have a right to this to avoid the present confusion and frustration. How will the Bill improve the provision of accessible information and advice and ensure that the comprehensive assessment of a disabled person’s needs will be effective across all local authorities and NHS bodies equally? The new concordat, which was published this week, is certainly welcome, but it seems to contain no means to ensure that individual disabled people can challenge local service provision if it is inadequate. Does the Minister have any estimate of the cost of the provisions in the Bill? I have always been very impressed by how much so many disabled people contribute to society. They enrich it and are an inspiration to us all. A severely disabled girl with liver disease, rickets and kidney failure could not find a job when she left school. A secretarial job was created for her at Guy’s Hospital, and she soon proved to be one of the best secretaries that we had. Moreover, she insisted on being dialysed three times a week at night, so she took no time off work. The effect on the rest of the department was very impressive, because, suddenly, no one else took any time off work—how could they? She later started to go downhill, but was given a kidney and liver transplant, which was a great success. She took on a new lease of life. She went into the church; when she gets up to preach, everyone listens to what she has to say, because she knows what she is talking about. A few years later, she got married. What an amazing transformation. What courage. We have friends who adopted a Chinese boy of 10, who was born without eyes and thrown on the rubbish tip soon after birth. He was rescued and taken to an orphanage, but was neglected there for years. However, after adoption, he was surrounded by love and attention and, within two years, this almost uncontrollable boy had improved so much that he was able to go skiing. There are many examples in this House of amazing, cheerful triumphs over adversity. What an inspiration and a great investment are so many disabled people. However, if altruism is not enough to encourage us to strive to improve the life of disabled people, a touch of realism might do, because half of us will be disabled to a greater or lesser extent before we die. We need to declare an interest in more senses than one.
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Baroness Royall of BlaisdonLabour- Quote
- My Lords, I once again pay tribute to my extraordinary noble friend Lord Ashley and celebrate his unceasing efforts over many years in furthering the interests of disabled people and his many achievements in the field. I am proud that this amazing, tenacious person really is my noble friend. He is a shining example of someone who has used the democratic system to bring about profound social change and increase social justice. Last week, I was speaking on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. I assured all noble Lords present that the Government are firmly against cloning in every shape or form but, when it comes to my noble friend Lord Ashley, I think that I would make an exception. In laying this Bill, my noble friend has provided another excellent opportunity for your Lordships’ House to debate the crucial issues around what independent living means for disabled people and how we can ensure that we enable them to have full choice, control and empowerment over their lives. I welcome this further opportunity to set out the progress that this Government have made in addressing these fundamental issues. To the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I say that, yes, we have achieved much, but he was right that it is the duty of every Government to achieve more. The debate around independent living rightly continues to be one of the liveliest and most informed in the disability community. As my noble friend Lord Ashley has argued, this debate is not simply about services that disabled people access; it is about the kind of society we believe that we ought to have in this country. It is about changing the thrust of the debate from the historic stance of providing a one-size-fits-all solution to one of enabling disabled people to live autonomous lives, enjoying the same choices, freedoms, dignity and control over their lives that the rest of society takes as given. When I spoke a few months ago, I emphasised that the Government supported the principles underpinning my noble friend’s Bill, but that we did not believe that a legislative solution to delivering equality and inclusion for disabled people was necessary or desirable. Our position has not changed. We wholeheartedly agree that we no longer want to see public policy or services developed centrally and imposed on disabled people on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. We want disabled people to have choice and control over their lives and the support that they need. We want to see local strategies to commission services in response to locally assessed needs and desires. We want to see disabled people involved in the design of policy and commissioning of services. One of the major themes of today’s debate was bureaucracy, the amount of which encountered by disabled people is quite appalling. We must do something about that, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, said. To me, addressing bureaucracy seems to be quite a simple problem. Clearly, it is not—I am sure that I shall have a ton of bricks down on my head—and we need to address it. Some of it seems to be due to managerial problems. I welcome the opportunity today to outline how the Government are tackling the inequalities that disabled people face in their everyday lives and the work that is being taken forward to enable disabled people to have the opportunity to live independently. Perhaps I may begin by outlining the progress that has been made with the Government’s independent living review. Your Lordships will remember that we set this cross-government review in train in early autumn last year in response to the recommendations of the strategy document, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People. This review, led by the Office for Disability Issues, has benefited enormously from the invaluable contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, whose record in furthering the rights of disabled people speaks for itself. We are extremely fortunate that she is a Member of your Lordships’ House and that she is also now chair of the disability committee of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I feel rather nervous about discussing the review in the noble Baroness’s presence, given that she as chair of the review panel of external experts is far more immersed in the detail than I can ever hope to be. I hope that she will forgive me if I represent the work of the review rather less well than she already has done. The review, which we see as a model for future working in partnership with service users, was rooted in the premise that independent living is about disabled people having choice and control over the support that they need to go about their daily lives. The review takes a life-course approach, from young people in transition to adulthood, and takes a step beyond the original Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People strategy in explicitly including the needs and wishes of older disabled people. When the review is published, as the noble Baroness rightly said, in January, it will set out a five-year strategy to improve opportunities for disabled people to live independently, including much needed new investment in housing. The strategy will clearly outline how the Government will achieve their policy commitments, identifying what difference those policies are intended to make, and how they will be measured and monitored. The new strategy for independent living will help deliver better joined-up delivery across government, and will promote a greater understanding of the principles of independent living. I must pay credit to the noble Baroness and the rest of the external advisory panel for their efforts in contributing to this review. While independent living is one of the most interesting social policy debates, it is also one of the most complex, and the panel played a vital role in challenging officials leading the review to pull out all the stops. As you would expect, the review generated a lively debate and many ideas. In fact, one real strength of the review is the way in which it has been conducted. The review has been based not just on discussion between a few government departments and local authorities, but on the principle of co-production, involving disabled people at every stage and bringing the views, thinking and experience of independent living experts into the heart of government. These principles of control, choice and empowerment are also fundamental to the Department of Health’s White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say. I have had the opportunity before of outlining the work that the Department of Health is taking forward to deliver greater choice and control and personalisation of care, not least through piloting individual budgets. I take the opportunity to highlight the recent Comprehensive Spending Review announcement that local authority funding would increase by £2.6 billion by 2010-11. In addition, direct funding from the department for social care for older people and support services for carers will increase by £190 million to £1.5 billion by 2010. This additional funding will support the delivery of the vision set out in Our Health, Our Care, Our Say through personalised budgets; provision of advocacy and information services; increased focus on preventive services to support people to live independently; and support for 3,000 people with learning difficulties to leave NHS campus accommodation and be supported to live independently within the community. I think that that answers some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I am sure that noble Lords welcome Putting People First: A Shared Vision and Commitment to the Transformation of Adult Social Care, which we announced earlier this week. This really is about transforming services and people’s lives. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, asked what would happen in the context of that new policy about challenges to the amount of money that people were awarded. I imagine that the situation will not change from the present situation, but I shall come back to the noble Lord in writing. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, spoke of the need for greater investment in low-level social care to prevent more expensive care later. I hope that this will be dealt with in the context of the new policy, but as she will know we also have a Green Paper coming out next year on the funding of social care. I draw noble Lords’ attention to an announcement, made by my noble friend Lady Andrews earlier this week, of £4.9 billion funding for the Supporting People programme over the next three years. This funding will help more than 1 million vulnerable people each year, including victims of domestic violence, teenage parents, older people and those with mental health problems, enabling them to live independently in their accommodation. Of course, I hope that it will also improve the lives of disabled people. We should always start with the people who need support. One of the greatest changes in social care in recent years is recognising and acknowledging that people who use services can help shape those services. In Control has led the way for many. Expectations are high, and we need to make sure that the right support is available. Empowering people to manage their own care can be beneficial, not only for the individual but also for government through cost-effectiveness. The work on user-led organisations, direct payments, individual budgets, along with In Control, is showing that people can be both creative and empowered to arrange support that is right for them, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, pointed out. The Office for Disability Issues and the Department of Health are not alone in driving forward action to support disabled people to live independent lives. As a Government, we have taken forward a comprehensive civil rights framework to lay the foundation for equality for disabled people. Over the past 10 years, we have significantly improved and extended rights for disabled people under the Disability Discrimination Act. These improvements have ensured that a further 1 million employers and 7 million more jobs are now covered by the Act. In addition, through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, we met our commitment to introducing a comprehensive set of enforceable civil rights for disabled people. The disability equality duty requires all public bodies to anticipate the needs of disabled service users, employees and potential employees. The duty will make sure that it is no longer acceptable, if it ever was, to wait until a disabled person complains before taking action. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, asked about a single integrated complaints procedure across health and social care. We have recently completed the consultation Making Experiences Count, which fulfils the commitment for a single complaints system across health and social care. It will go much further and propose a new approach that will make the experience of making a complaint easier, more user-friendly, co-operative and much more responsive to people’s needs, involving independents where required. A vital element is that health and social care services should learn routinely from the complaints feeding into service improvement. Like my noble friend Lord Ashley, I am under no illusion that we still have a fair way to go before all disabled people are empowered to participate fully in society. The Government are not complacent, and we are determined to deliver real change not just in the lives of disabled people themselves, but in the way in which society reacts to disability. I have set out a brief description of what we are doing, but I shall highlight key steps along the path to delivering that change. We clearly set out our commitment to delivering equality for disabled people almost three years ago in our White Paper, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People. As a key step in driving action to make that commitment a reality, we launched the Office for Disability Issues two years ago. Just over a year ago we launched Equality 2025, an independent advisory group of disabled people, to advise Ministers and government departments on disability equality aspects of policy development. At the earliest opportunity the Minister for Disabled People signed for the UK the new UN Convention on the rights of disabled people. I am assured by my honourable friend the Minister that we will ratify that convention by the end of 2008. Many questions were posed and noble Lords must forgive me if I miss any out. I shall come back to noble Lords in writing and we shall of course have an opportunity to explore many more of the issues in Committee. Many noble Lords raised the issue of carers. This Government have done a very fine job in improving the lives of many carers, who are of course central to the lives of many people with disabilities in this country. We could not function as a society without carers. We have announced the national carers strategy review, a new review of carers, which focuses in part on the issue of young carers. The current situation is of course absolutely abhorrent and, while it is not possible to prevent children or young people from wanting to help and support their disabled relative, services and support should be in place to prevent them being depended on inappropriately. We must and will address that in the new carers strategy. My noble friend rightly said that we must begin discussions on all the issues encapsulated in his Bill. I hope that one discussion will be in the very near future with my noble friend the Leader of the House, who will lead in the House on the new equalities Bill. I know that she would certainly value his advice on disability issues in that very important new Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, rightly drew our attention to many shortcomings in the National Health Service. I shall get back to her in writing on some of the issues; clearly the problems experienced by her husband were and are unacceptable. The noble Baroness is correct that some services are patchy in some areas: in some areas they are excellent and in others there is huge room for improvement. That is precisely why my noble friend Lord Darzi is undertaking his review. On palliative care, I am grateful for the examples that the noble Baroness cited. I also draw attention to a very fine “hospice at home” programme in my own PCT in Gloucestershire, which is being run in conjunction with Sue Ryder Care. That provides an excellent service which I hope will be replicated throughout the country. Of course we must give greater attention to tender loving care and dignity. We have, as noble Lords will know, a Dignity in Care campaign, and we have to ensure that it brings about results. The noble Baroness drew to our attention the problems of assessing people with mental health problems. We agree about the importance of assessment and treatment, but we believe that the best way forward is through measures to support and develop best practice on the ground. The Government's role is to set priorities and standards for the NHS but it is best for those assessments and the requirements for those assessments to be met on the ground. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, spoke about disabled people and employment. We are working with employees and employers to disseminate best practice in health and safety at work and in absence management and recruitment and retention policies. We are working with health professionals to disseminate best practice in vocational rehabilitation, providing support for employment advisers. We also have pilots ensuring that there are employment advisers in GP surgeries. The Department for Work and Pensions published a consultation on 3 September to consider options to reform disability employment programmes such as Work Step. The DWP wants to ensure that the individual's requirements are properly supported. The consultation runs until March 2008 and I urge noble Lords to respond to it should they know of any examples. On better and earlier advice on employment, we are introducing a new gateway to benefits and are transforming the current assessment process within the gateway so that it provides professional assessment of an individual’s eligibility for financial support based on their functional capacity. It identifies those who are capable of taking part in work-related activity and the support and interventions required to help them get back to work. It identifies people who are so limited by their illness or disability that it would be unreasonable to require them to undertake any form of work-related activity in the foreseeable future. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, drew our attention to the difficulties encountered by disabled people who move from one place in the country where they have a care package tailored to their needs to another where they have to go through the assessment procedure. I will come back to him on that issue. If we are not addressing it, it will have to be addressed. It is a problem that disabled people should not have to encounter. The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised many housing issues, some of which I shall return to in Committee. I regret that I cannot update him with information on building regulations. As he will know, we recently announced increases in the disabled facilities grant. We will increase it by £25 million for 2008-09, a significant 20 per cent increase. The Government have also announced plans to strengthen home improvement agencies, the locally based not-for-profit organisations which help home owners and tenants renting private housing to repair and maintain their homes. We have also announced a new three-year contract for a national co-ordinating body for HIAs which will support the delivery of the forthcoming National Strategy for Housing in an Ageing Society, providing ongoing support for HIAs and giving the sector a voice in government. On the lifetime home standard and housing for people with disability, the Government have decided to take forward lifetime homes, at least in the first instance, through a code for sustainable homes. The Government consider the code to be extremely important. Its aim is to give developers a non-regulatory means of improving the sustainability of buildings and to become the single national standard that all developers will subscribe to and consumers demand. Putting that in the code is, we believe, a faster way of getting the standard out to developers; making it part of the building regulations would take far longer. Nor does putting it in the code rule out making lifetime homes part of the regulatory base in the long run. This is an issue which government will continue to keep under close review. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised the very important issue of transport and the difficulties encountered by so many disabled people. Of course the London underground presents specific problems, and those problems must be addressed. However, I understand why it takes so long. Nevertheless, we have made huge improvements on bus transport, even getting rid of the much loved Routemasters in order to ensure that people with disabilities can travel on buses. I would also draw the noble Lord’s attention to the fact that, just last week, Transport for London won an independent living transport award for making London buses so accessible. I have been speaking for an awfully long time, so will come back to noble Lords on any other issues. In conclusion, I repeat that I welcome the principles underpinning the Bill and again congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on giving the House an opportunity to discuss this very important issue. However, I also have to emphasise that the Government are not convinced of the need for legislation of this nature although of course we recognise the right of people with disabilities to be emancipated—in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. We believe that there would be major cost implications in implementing all that is proposed, although I firmly believe that the work which the Government have set in train in publishing and responding to the challenges of the life chances White Paper, in particular the plans for a five-year strategy on independent living, means that the goals that we all desire can be delivered without recourse to legislation. I know of no person more determined than my noble friend Lord Ashley; so despite what the Government say, I am sure that one day his Bill will be enacted.
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- 11:24
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- Lord Ashley of StokeLabour
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- My Lords, it has been an excellent debate and some remarkably perceptive speeches have been made. I think that, having heard the speeches of noble Lords, the whole House will now be far better informed on issues of disability. I am very grateful to all those who took part in this marvellous debate, and there is obviously more to come. I thank also those who made personal comments about my work. I appreciate the comments of my noble friend the Minister, but one that I did not appreciate was that dreadful phrase, “We support the principles underlying the Bill”. When the noble Lord, Lord McColl, echoed the phrase, I knew that we were sunk. It is a phrase that I want never to hear again, because it is a method of escaping responsibility. We simply have to grasp the nettle of this subject. The Minister paid no regard to my comment about the massive savings—£30 billion plus £30 billion. The Bill would save £60 billion. Figures have been produced by the various independent agencies, so I hope that I can soon persuade my noble friend to think again. I must say that the Government are active on the issues of disability and have done a great deal. But the best thing they can do now is to satisfy all the speakers in today’s debate by supporting this comprehensive, all-embracing Bill. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.
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