Clause 31 — relevant services

Part of Welfare Reform Bill (Programme) (No. 2) – in the House of Commons am 6:15 pm ar 10 Tachwedd 2009.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Jonathan R Shaw Jonathan R Shaw Minister of State (Disabled People), Regional Affairs, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions 6:15, 10 Tachwedd 2009

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.