I beg to move, That this House
agrees with Lords amendment 30.

With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendments 31 to 49.

It will be useful if I address amendments 34 to 37 first. These amendments restructure clause 33 and make subsequent changes to clauses 34 and 35 to reflect the restructuring of clause 33.

During the debates in this House and the other place, we listened carefully to the broad consensus that the wording of the Bill should more clearly signal the original policy intention that we set out in the welfare reform White Paper. The original wording of clause 33 was deliberately cast broadly to ensure that we could enable trailblazers to test innovative approaches to delivering the right to control. However, we recognise that the wording could set out more clearly that disabled people are at the centre of the right-to-control provisions.

Amendments 30 to 33, amendment 38 and amendments 44 to 49 remove the exclusion of adult social care for the trailblazers and create an order-making power with which the exclusion can be permanently removed depending on the results of a trailblazer evaluation. In the White Paper, we made clear our commitment to align adult community care services with the right to control. We also made clear our intention that disabled people will be at the centre of the right-to-control provisions. We outlined in Committee that adult community care services were originally excluded to avoid duplicating existing community care and direct payments legislation.

We have also made it clear that we deliberately cast the original wording of clause 33 broadly, to enable trailblazers to innovate and test the best ways to deliver the right to control. However, we recognise the importance of clarity in the Bill. We want the legislation to be clear, so that disabled people and local authorities know what the right to control means and what services are included. That is why we developed the amendments over the summer in co-production with Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and the Royal Association for Disability Rights to ensure that the legislation meets the needs of disabled people while retaining flexibility in delivering the right to control.

We have also worked across government to ensure that the amendments to include the alignment with adult community care services do not compromise the existing community care legislation. We tabled the amendments in the other place, where they received cross-party support, with Lord Freud and Baroness Thomas adding their names to them. Baroness Campbell thanked the Government for the genuinely co-productive approach that we adopted in developing the amendments. I hope that support for the amendments is as universal in this House as it was in the other place.

Amendments 39 to 43 are technical amendments that are necessary to ensure that where Welsh Ministers have Executive competence over funding streams, they can make secondary legislation to bring devolved funding streams and services within the right to control. It was always our intention that Welsh Ministers would have the ability to make regulations in relation to devolved funding streams and services. Amendments 39 to 43 are necessary to ensure that the legislation accurately reflects our intention.

In summary, the amendments in the group are designed to ensure that the provisions accurately reflect our policy intention that the right to control will deliver genuine choice and control to disabled people over certain state funding that they receive. I commend the amendment to the House.

The Minister will not be surprised to know that the amendments in the group have the support of the Opposition. I am pleased that the Government accepted them in the other place and worked closely with Baroness Campbell of Surbiton on co-producing them.

The Government have effectively done what we urged them to do when we debated the issue in the Commons. The Minister will know, because he was the one dealing with part 2 of the Bill, that we pressed in Committee for the exclusion of community and social care services from the Bill to be removed. He is right; we highlighted the fact that the Bill included a broadly drawn power, which sounded encouraging, that was narrowed substantially by the exclusion of community care services. When we pressed the Minister in Committee, the answer that he gave was about avoiding duplication or causing confusion. We pressed him on that, and I am pleased that the discussions that took place-presumably between the Minister's Department and the Department of Health-have been successful. He has confirmed that the pilots will be able to include community care services and that if those pilots are successful, as I very much believe they will be-

Trailblazers.

Yes, I must call them trailblazers. That is an important use of language, because it suggests to those running the schemes that that is how we want things to happen-it is important to recognise that there is cross-party support for the initiative. The trailblazers are being introduced to work out how best to do that; they are not pilot schemes that may or may not be successful. For those local authorities and other bodies that are thinking of implementing such programmes, it is worth knowing that there is a genuine commitment on both sides of the House to putting disabled people at the centre of the services provided to them and to having them being in control of the funding. That is an important message, so I am grateful to the Minister for heckling me and putting me right about calling the schemes "trailblazers".

The Minister also drew attention to the work done in the other House, which involved Baroness Campbell of Surbiton working closely with the Minister-Baroness Campbell and I have also had many discussions about the matter. With the Lords amendments in the current group, the Bill now looks in good shape. As I was saying before we had that little diversion, if the trailblazers are successful, Ministers will have the general power to get rid of the community care exclusion, so that when the schemes are rolled out across the country, we will see genuinely joined-up services.

One of the powerful things in this debate is that by taking money from different Departments, putting it together and giving it to the individuals concerned, thereby putting them in control and allowing them to spend it, we are likely to be more successful in joining up services and delivering them seamlessly, rather than having different Departments working alongside each other. I therefore welcome the amendments in the group that deal with that point.

The first set of amendments that the Minister mentioned deal with, as it were, changing the order of precedence. I welcome the fact that the way in which the amendments are worded now puts the disabled person at the centre of things and makes it much clearer that the local or other authority with which they are working has to work with them in partnership, which was not adequately reflected in the original wording. That is a step forward.

With those two changes together, we have an improved Bill. In particular, the right to control has the potential to change the lives of many disabled people significantly for the better and give them the opportunity to fulfil their potential. We therefore have no hesitation in welcoming the amendment.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He is absolutely right that we are talking about trailblazers, not pilots. That is the policy intention. We have had the pilots and we have learned from them about what works and about those areas where we need to improve things. I appreciate, too, his words about our discussions with Baroness Campbell. I hope that the House will accept the amendments.

Lords amendment 30 agreed to , with Commons privileges waived .

Lords amendments 31 to 49 agreed to , with Commons privileges waived in respect of Lords amendments 31, 38, 44 and 48 .

After Clause 43