Disabled Persons (Independent Living)Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord,Lord Ashley, has displayed once again his key parliamentary quality: persistence. He has not let the issue of disabilities rest. He has been battling away for considerably longer than I have. At times, I think, ““Haven’t we done enough? Haven’t we pushed the Government far enough?”” But the noble Lord comes back again and again. I congratulate him and those who have worked with him on the Bill. When going through the Bill, you discover that there is nothing new there. Every aspiration has been accepted by all Governments that I have seen while in this House and by all parties at various times. The problem—and this is a problem of government, not of a particular party—is that the issue is ““difficult””, or does not ““fit in””. I went through the clauses, deciding which was my favourite. It is Clause 5, the smallest one: "““General duty of local authorities and NHS bodies””." Making bits of government work together to achieve common objectives is probably one of the great targets that Parliament should aim for. The Chinese walls of Whitehall and other parts of the government system are sometimes so dense that nothing happens between them. Ministers have a great responsibility for bridging those walls, or punching holes through them—whatever is required to get there. When an Act takes on that responsibility, it will have to tackle probably the major cause of inactivity among government departments, where the aspiration is there, and make the departments talk to one another. They might then realise that, once they get out of the ““my little budget”” zone—and it is usually no more than that—they still have a responsibility to continue, not just if they are pushed by a persistent Minister. Having got that little rant out of the way, I shall consider the rest of the Bill. It is valuable, because it addresses the tendency of us all to be slightly protectively condescending to someone whom we do not quite understand—the ““Does he take sugar?”” attitude that is there in all of us, in a way. We must fight against that. Those whom we do not understand we are slightly frightened of—slightly wary—and we think, ““Maybe this is safe for you. Maybe you’ll be worried out there””. As my noble friend said, the problem is when parents get frightened. Parents are usually the initial carers of most of these groups. Most of the bodies that look after and support people with disabilities usually start with parents as the formation base. We have to remember that people are individuals first and foremost. I hope that this Bill will be a step forward for disabled people by allowing them to organise their lives and occasionally get it wrong or make mistakes—or get something of which we do not approve, which will be more normally the case. The emphasis on advocacy, support and information that runs through the Bill is its underlying strength. The Government must find out who needs help. These things will draw everything together to ensure that, if we co-ordinate help, it will go to the right people. The current service of help and support is effectively a mirror or reverse image of battlefield medicine, where those who are least badly damaged are patched up first in order to get them out again. We wait until something is critical and broken down before doing anything. In particular, the health service finds itself a catch-all for everything that has gone wrong. We incur costs at the extreme end because we do not intervene earlier. The Government should give advice and support to enable people who can work to do so. If that is not possible, people should at least be able to organise their lives so that they are fulfilled and do not have unnecessary problems associated with mental illness. People want to interact positively with the rest of society. If that is done, many costs will be avoided. There could be, for example, acute support service costs if intervention is incorrect. If the Government can assure us that some of this will be taken on board—in the Bill, co-ordination and advocacy immediately grab me—there will be no need for the noble Lord’s Bill. However, I suspect that the noble Lord will need to carry on battering and using his persistence, and that we will need to go through Committee stage in order to at least drag out a clearer idea of the Government’s thinking on how these needs will be met. The noble Lord is continuing in the rich vein of form that he has had since I came to this House. He makes sure that the Government are kept up to the mark and that those of us who have less natural persistence and a less keenly felt sense of purpose carry on. This Government can safely say, ““We have done more than any other Government””. That is true, but previous Governments could have said that, too. We could do this almost Parliament by Parliament, as we build on law that has been passed by previous Governments. We have to make sure that we continue to apply this. There are no new ideas, although these are well put together in one new form. I hope that the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, will give an assurance that we will have further discussion on the Bill and that the Government will tell us exactly where they think they have got in their independent programmes for meeting the ends that are brought into focus by this Bill.