My Lords, I shall give some support to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. He has thought about this issue in greater detail than many, and that is very important. It is worth pointing out one thing which many people seem to have forgotten. We already operate
deferred payments. We have done for a very long time; this is not new. My first question to the Minister is, what intelligence have the Government taken from the evidence which already exists about the operation of current deferred payment schemes—albeit not as part of the Dilnot scheme—in the assumptions they have made about how this legislation will be implemented?
Secondly, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that the potential effects will vary according to demography. In certain boroughs, the overall balance of the population and its longevity will mean that this has a greater impact than elsewhere. For example, in Greater London, the impact will be completely different in the London Borough of Newham and the London Borough of Richmond. Have the differing effects in different geographical areas been modelled? What lessons have the Government taken from that modelling?
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is right. This scheme is a very important part of the overall architecture of Dilnot, and if it does not work, given the sensitivities which there are around property and so on, it could be extremely damaging. The noble Lord may be right that it should be deferred, perhaps as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, suggested, for a year. It may be better to do it at leisure and in more detail than to do it in haste and get it wrong.
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