My Lords, I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is not in his seat. He tabled Amendment 79 to express the strength of feeling of Members of this House who were sitting on the scrutiny committee about the Secretary of State’s the duty to have regard to well-being. Were there room for more than four names to the amendment, there would have been more Members of your Lordships’ House on that list.
To put this in context—and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has taken us through quite a lot of this—this Bill was widely consulted. It was probably the coalition’s most widely consulted Bill; somebody might be able to tell me to the contrary. At each stage, people welcomed the well-being principle. Perhaps I may remind the House that in the majority report on the Bill, one of the recommendations was that the Secretary of State should have due regard. When the final Bill was produced, many in the sector approached me, and I suspect many others, to express their disappointment that that was not included in it. When the Secretary of State came to give evidence with the Minister for Care and Support, the right honourable Norman Lamb, he was very positive about it. According to the transcript of the session, Norman Lamb said:
“We absolutely want the wellbeing principle to apply comprehensively”.
The well-being principle is around the change of culture and it puts the person at the centre. It is absolutely critical that that happens, and next week we will debate the whole business of assessment and how we are undertaking it. However, unless the Secretary of State has to have regard to the same principle as local authorities, there is an opportunity for future Secretaries of State when making regulation to disregard well-being and just make regulation in the old way. One thing that sets this Bill aside from many others is that it is written in plain English and throughout its intention is pretty clear.
I ask the Minister if he is able to offer any assurance to the House, to the sector and to those for whom the Bill is written—the service users and the carers—that the Government will think again about the decision not to include in the Bill a duty on the Secretary of State to take well-being into consideration.