My Lords, I rise briefly as yet another mere vice-president of the Local Government Association to bring a slightly different dimension to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out that local authorities are finding a variety of different ways of delivering services. I have been looking at some of those and listening to messages about them. One issue is that they are delivering cheaper services, which often means commissioning them from providers which will then deliver them at a different level of quality. I declare an interest as a provider in the charity Livability, which delivers services to the disabled, the elderly and some children from residential care.
We need to know whether we are prepared to open the debate. Have the Government as a whole given thought to discussing with the community at large what we really can and cannot afford for the future? The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, raised the issue of the numbers of inspections. When I was involved in inspections, one issue was that you could deliver as many inspections as you had funding for. Now you can use that funding in a variety of different ways to get better options but, at the end of the day, resources count and, unless we know how far the resources will go, it is pointless to try to descend into the abyss, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said.
If we are going to take this forward, we have to know what level of quality people are prepared to accept. Then, when there are failures in organisations, people are not blamed, because the failure is not necessarily one of individuals or even of groups but of the corporate whole simply not having enough resources to work across the whole piece. Until we start that debate, we will not be able to intervene in discussions about criticisms of local authorities giving only 15-minute slots to people when they have only enough resources for 15-minute slots. In residential care, we are taking away some of the extra services because there is no more money them. We are reducing staffing in various institutions because there are simply not enough resources.
I am not denying that because of the deficit we have to look at funding; I think we do. However, we have to open up the debate. Otherwise, we raise expectations in the country of what we are entitled to. I sat in this Chamber until 11 o’clock last night discussing the Children and Families Bill, and we were having exactly the same discussion. We all want these wonderful things. I want things in this Bill, but somehow we have to decide on some priorities between them all. Whatever we say, we cannot go on expecting to get the same out of the same.