Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I want to contribute to this group and speak to Motions G1, G2 and H. As context, I say that my noble friend, the Front Bench team and their Bill team have gone to enormous efforts to try to reach a number of compromises; at this stage it is incumbent on us to recognise that. If we were to send further amendments to the other place, we should confine ourselves to doing so only in circumstances where we believe that there is a realistic prospect of reaching a compromise on them I was a signatory to Amendment 80. There was a compelling reason to send that to the other place and ask it to consider again the question of excluding local authority contributions from the calculation of the social care cap. The reason was, very straightforwardly, that it was introduced in the Commons at a late stage in the passage of the Bill. At that point—on Report—MPs themselves complained vociferously that they had not had an opportunity to consider it for any period of time, so it has gone back. In sending it back, we have done our job, but I am afraid I see no evidence that the Government, given their majority in the Commons, are going to reconsider the central question of excluding local authority contributions from the cap. I think they are wrong but, particularly given the substantial financial consequences it would entail, it would be wrong for us to think that we could insist—and if we cannot insist, we should not send it back Where Motion H is concerned, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who kindly moved my amendment—which was entirely in my name— as at that point I was down with Covid for the first time. I would not now insist on that provision, not least because it entails financial privilege. From my point of view, it was to say, "Would you please get on with it?" My noble friend said in his introduction that the Government are getting on with it. I can promise him that, if they do not get on with it by the latter part of next year, we will be complaining and will be right to do so I turn to Motion G. Why have I tabled Motion G2? I confess that I have done it not in the expectation that we will send it to the other place because, as my noble friend said, that would be to intervene with quite a significant argument at this very late stage. However, I think the development of these arguments on the part of the Government has been quite interesting. First, they said, "Well, we are doing something and something is better than nothing." Indeed, something is better than nothing, but it is not necessarily the best thing. So we said, "Hang on a minute. You said you would do this last September and introduce the cap." We thought they were doing something that was very much in line with the Dilnot recommendations, even if the cap was set at a higher level, but it then turned out that they were not and that they were excluding local authority contributions On the financial implications of that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, set out very well, if it saves £900 million, from whom principally is that saving to be derived? It is from those who are otherwise the beneficiaries of local authority contributions and who, as a consequence, are not asked to pay towards the cap. As the noble Baroness said, particularly if they have dementia and long-term care needs, over the years their assets will be substantially more depleted than would otherwise have been the case. I do not think we should kid ourselves: the Government are planning to do something which, in my view, exacerbates significantly the inequitable characteristics of the way the cap works. It is regressive in its effects Curiously, when they were debating this at the other end, they looked at the risk that incorporating local authority contributions would mean that, in different places across the country, different local authorities would provide different levels of contributions and therefore people would end up with some inequity in the amount they had to pay. This is no doubt true, but it feels like the Government shrieked at the mouse of inequity that would result from that and ignored the elephant of inequity that is in the removal of the local authority contribution to the cap I am always rather amused when the Minister is briefed—this happened at the other end as well—to tell us about what happened in 2012 or 2014 on the Care Act. Yes, Andrew Dilnot looked at whether the cap should be expressed as a percentage of people’s assets and did not recommend it, but that is not what is proposed in Motion G2. The model that was rejected was that there would not be a cap figure and that the cap would simply be expressed as a percentage—the so-called limited liability model. We did not support it, but the Dilnot model also had a lower cap and its structure, with the changes in the means test, would have had the effect that nobody would have lost more than about 45% of their assets. The structure the Government are now bringing in will mean that people with relatively few assets will continue to lose, in effect, 100% of their assets. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, correctly said, people who have substantial assets will only ever lose a modest proportion of those. It is not fair I am going to retreat, but I tell my noble friend that I think the Government should say, and I hope he will say in response, that if this turns out to be inequitable, which I believe it will, and the Government want to find the money to do something about it, they have the means to do so. I think that using the concept of a percentage of one’s assets is a legitimate way of doing it. Finally, just to put this on the record, my noble friend said that we cannot do that and that it is unworkable because people’s assets are constantly changing. No: if you do it in the context of the cap, people whose assets are significantly in excess of the requisite calculation of the amount of relevant assets would never have to be checked again. It is therefore perfectly possible to do it in relation only to those people whose financial means have to be regularly assessed for the purposes of the local authority means test in any case It is entirely workable; it could be done. Frankly, I think that with the passage of time the Government will realise that it is a better way of managing the cap; saying, for example, that 50% or 60% of one’s assets may be required to meet the cap but never as much as 100%. So I am retreating, and I encourage noble Lords not to insist on something that has substantial financial implications and on which the other place—as was quite clear from the debate—is not willing to shift. I hope my noble friend will say that, if this or indeed any future Government were to decide that they wanted to ameliorate the regressive effects of the exclusion of local authority contributions, there are other routes to doing so. Setting a percentage of the assets of people who are subjected to the means test as their contribution to the cap would be an effective way.