I am pleased to speak from the Dispatch Box for the first time on this important and serious matter, and especially to support the all-party disablement group, its many eminent members who are here today, and their new clause, which follows that moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). He has done more than hold my hand over the past few days while I have been working my way into this complex Bill.

I know of the interest of the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) in this issue and I concur with many of his remarks. He rightly said that the new clause would put the independent living fund on a statutory basis and, above all, safeguard the payments from that fund which are currently made to severely disabled people. Sadly, the new clause is necessary because the Government appear confused and uncertain about the future of the ILF.

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We all know that the deeds that created the charity—the ILF—expire on 8 June 1993. If the new clause does nothing else, I hope that it will smoke out the Government and give them the opportunity to make clear the future of the ILF and, above all, the future of those people who desperately need it or whatever takes its place. We hope that the Government will take this opportunity today.

There is great strength of feeling behind the new clause which is shown both by the fact that it is tabled by the all-party disablement group and by the presence of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) and other members of the former Select Committee on Social Services who propose that the ILF should be placed on a statutory basis. I hope that the Government will listen to the bodies that speak for disabled people, to parties of all complexions and to Parliament itself which found its voice through the former Social Services Select Committee.

The fund was set up to rectify the mistakes caused by the recklessness of the Social Security Act 1986, which left many severely disabled people as losers under what was then the new income support scheme. The ILF was not a spontaneous act of generosity by the Government. It was an attempt to make good some of the damage that they wrought in their social security expenditure changes in 1986 which were implemented in 1988. Having removed an essential provision, the Government rightly sought to put that right, at least in part.

The philosophical problem facing the Government is that they appear to regard severely disabled people as a public expenditure problem. The issue will not go away. Severely disabled people will not be reshuffled and will not disappear because of the 1986 Act, the ILF, a fancy agency or whatever takes the place of the ILF. A new answer must be devised which commands all-party support, which will stick and which will be for the benefit of severely disabled people.

The latest Government wheeze is to shuffle this "problem" over to local authorities under the community care policy and to hive off responsibility ever further until they can say, "This is somebody else's baby. It is not our responsibility." Whatever institutional rearrangement the Government come up with, the demand of severely disabled people for basic assistance to meet their obvious fundamental right to live independently as far as possible will reassert itself. The Government must understand that that fundamental need will not be organised away.

The ILF started with £5 million a year. As the hon. Member for Exeter said, next year it will have £62 million. Even that figure entails rejecting nearly three quarters of the applications received and restricing the original criteria to those who are over 16 or under 74 years old. Anyone who is not on the higher-rate attendance allowance is also disqualified.

As the hon. Member for Exeter said, the ILF is threatened by its very success. That underlines the need for the fund or a successor body. Who knows what is the unmet demand from among the 6,000 disabled people in the United Kingdom? The answer to that frightens the Government and motivates their search for someone—anyone but the Government—to administer a scheme such as this. In Committee, the Minister said: After 1993, the generality of cases should go to local authorities. There will obviously be a need for some interim arrangement to deal with the existing load of the ILF . . There will have to be some transitional provision and there may be some provision for new cases. I am not able to go much further than that today".—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 11 December 1990; c. 63.] In the two months that have elapsed since the Minister said that, perhaps he has had a chance to think about what will happen next for those with severe disability. I invite him to tell the House those thoughts.