Domicillary Care LCO

Speech by Peter Black delivered to Plenary on Tue 20th May 2008

Peter Black: I welcome Jonathan Morgan's final point. If we can use the powers that will be conferred on us by this legislative competence Order to extend the level of care that is available in Wales, we will have done everyone in the country a great service, and will have improved the lives of countless people around Wales. If that is possible and can be funded, that should be looked at in the Measures that could arise out of this LCO.

On behalf of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, I welcome this LCO and the powers that it will confer on the Assembly. It is important that we use the opportunities that are available to us through the Government of Wales Act 2006 to acquire the powers necessary to bring about the social change that the vast majority of Assembly Members in this Chamber want to bring about, and to use those powers to improve the lives of people in Wales. In the context of this LCO and the powers that it seeks, the ultimate objective-again, I think that it is the ultimate objective of many of the parties represented here-is to achieve free personal care for people in Wales, and although that will not be achievable or affordable immediately, this LCO will, ultimately, enable that to happen. For that reason, it is to be welcomed, because if we can work towards that objective of having free personal care, we need to do so-albeit that it may take a number of years to achieve that.

Reference was made by Jonathan in particular, but also by other speakers, to the variation in charges between local authorities. It is unreasonable to expect individual local authorities to take a Wales-wide view and to try to thrash out differences with other local authorities in terms of their provision. It is the role of the Welsh Assembly Government to do that. That is the policy that it is pursuing, and the LCO will enable that to be done.

Jonathan Morgan: I accept what Peter said about the role of the Assembly Government, but surely the role of the Welsh Local Government Association is to help local authorities achieve best practice and to ensure that such problems are ironed out.

Peter Black: The Welsh Local Government Association is there to promote best practice, but the whole point of local government is that local councils have discretion. Councils are democratically accountable to their locality. I will not defend some of the differences between councils. Clearly, they are difficult to defend in many instances, but each council has to be accountable to its electorate for the provision that it makes. When the Government comes to implement the powers that will be made available through this LCO and start to introduce Measures, I hope that it takes that into account. We should work with local councils to achieve this step change, not force it on them, and when we introduce those changes, we need to ensure that they are funded fully. That was an important point that came out of the scrutiny process, albeit a point that it more for the Measure stage than for the LCO. If we are going to tell local councils that must change the way in which charge-either in relation to the basis for the charges, or in terms of the charges themselves-that will have a cost and we must ensure that it is properly funded by the Welsh Assembly Government no matter who happens to be running that Government, otherwise those local councils would be right to cry foul in terms of how this LCO is being implemented.

Some of the discrepancies that we have around Wales are partly down to the financial situation that local councils find themselves in. There have been tight settlements and local councils are having to find ways of raising finance. It is wrong that they are doing so through the charging process and, in a sense, they are penalising the vulnerable by doing so, but that is the reality of the financial situation in which they find themselves.

In summary, I am happy to support this LCO and to acquire the powers for the Welsh Assembly to introduce some sort of consistency across Wales in partnership with local councils. I am also happy to have the powers that we can ultimately use to introduce free personal care for the elderly and the disabled around Wales.