Thank you very much. My Lords, I think this is a very interesting group of amendments and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, in her Amendments 78C and 79K—to which I have added my name—and her other amendments makes some very important points about the need for a preventive approach, including its health dimension. My noble friend Lord Touhig has added his powerful voice to it.
In Amendments 79K and 80A there is a real issue here about the national minimum eligibility threshold. It would provide some certainty for some adults about whether their care needs will be met, but we know there will be many people whose needs remain just below the level at which local authorities will at a minimum need to meet through the national eligibility criteria. We know the Ending the Other Care Crisis report produced by Scope with four other charities estimates that 105,000 working-aged disabled adults will in fact continue to rely on universal services. This places greater responsibility on local authorities to put in place the necessary services to help prevent, delay or reduce care needs.
There is an argument for framing Clause 2 more positively to encompass the many diverse forms of preventive support that local authorities could put in place to prevent deterioration in the well-being of adults in their area. We want local authorities to be more ambitious and to think about prevention more positively.
While understanding the pressures that undoubtedly local authorities will be under, these amendments would give a very powerful voice to the need to go down the preventive route.
My Amendment 79A, to which the noble Lord, Lord Low, has added his name, continues the same theme on placing a general duty on local authorities to prevent, delay or reduce the need for care and support. We know that in Clause 2 there is a requirement on local authorities to look at how they can make the best use of community facilities to prevent, delay and reduce needs for care and support. That is very welcome indeed but the question is: to what extent are local authorities geared to put that into practice? Hence I have tabled this amendment. I think we need give a push to local authorities to take this seriously. I hope the noble Earl will be sympathetic to agreeing to some form of amendment which would reflect this in Clause 2.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, has a number of other amendments in this area which I would very much wish to support, although I have not lent my name to them. They are very well framed and important. Coming back to the issue we discussed in the debate just before the dinner break, this legislation may well stay on the statute book for many years to come, so it is really important to get it right. The emphasis that the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Rix, have given to these points bears careful consideration, so I am very happy to support them.