My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for tabling this amendment. This would place a duty on the Secretary of State to arrange a review of legal and financial rights and obligations of adult carers, adults they care for and codependent adult family members who share a house, with a view to considering the establishment of a specific legal status for such people that would include rights and obligations arising at death of one of the adults concerned.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and my noble friend Lady Hooper emphasised the human side of this challenge, and of course one sympathises with the cases that they mention. Noble Lords will remember that we had an extensive debate recently on these issues both for the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, and in 2004 for the Civil Partnership Bill, as my noble friend Lady Barker has set out. In the recent debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, sought to include carers and cohabitees in the proposed review of civil partnerships. We had some debate then about the Government’s support for carers. The point was also made that this was in essence a tax point.
I note that during the debate we recently had, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said that, having studied the Care Bill, she had not seen in it a hook on which to hang such a review. We believe that interpretation was correct. Such a review would be enormously complex and range much further than the provision of care and support.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, stated in Committee on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, inheritance advantages on death would need to be balanced by responsibilities and financial dependencies during lifetime. There would need to be a fundamental root and branch review of social security and pensions policy and the provision of means-tested benefits, as well as a review of rights and obligations on death. Such questions about legal rights and responsibilities, arising from specific family relationships and friendships, are not related to the subject matter of the Care Bill. Nor do they fall within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Health. Indeed, Carers UK has said that forming some kind of formal legal relationship between a carer and the person they care for is not the
right way to solve the challenges that carers currently face, a point that my noble friend Lady Barker has emphasised.
Parents, children and siblings already have a legally recognised relationship to each other that affords certain rights—for example, in the laws of intestacy. The Government, of course, value the contribution of carers in supporting family members and friends, recognising that they may often be caring for many years. That is why the Care Bill provides for significant improvements for carers in terms of offering them support in their caring role and in having a life of their own alongside caring. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, in Committee on 3 July, said of the attention given to carers in the Bill:
“In the history of the carers’ movement, with which I have been associated for nearly 30 years, it is truly the most significant development that we have seen”.—[Official Report, 3/7/13; col. 1311.]
She said today that it is all she could have dreamed of in terms of the rights of carers. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, said that it is one of the best Bills we have seen in a long time. New and simplified assessment procedures will focus on the impact of caring on individual carers and families, on how to support carers to look after their own health and well-being and on the outcomes carers wish to achieve in their day-to-day life, including employment.
We also intend to provide carers with similar rights to support as those for whom they care. This new duty has been warmly welcomed as providing parity of esteem with those who need care and support. They will, of course, benefit from other provisions within the Bill, including the provisions that a local authority must promote an individual’s well-being in all decisions made with and about them and the requirements on what local authority information and advice services should include so that people understand how the care and support system works, what services are available locally, and how to access those services. The cap on eligible care costs will help to reassure everyone that they have a level of protection if they or members of their family have the most serious needs and incur very high care costs. I hope that I have reassured the noble Baroness of our support for carers.
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As for the issues in this amendment, the UK’s progressive personal tax system is based on the principle of independent taxation whereby individuals rather than families contribute to the cost of providing public services based on their ability to pay. In contrast, the UK’s family-based welfare system helps people to move into and progress in work while supporting the most vulnerable families on the basis of need. The tax system does not reflect individuals’ personal or family circumstances because it does not need to. The welfare system does that by providing support based on need, which encompasses family circumstances and caring needs. That allows the tax system to focus on raising the revenue that is necessary to fund public services and welfare support in a more cost-efficient way while ensuring that individuals feel they are contributing to public services by paying taxes.
All estates benefit from the inheritance tax threshold of £325,000, which can be left to any beneficiary free of IHT. When combined with other relief, this means that fewer than 4% of estates left on death pay any IHT at all, while two-thirds of all IHT is paid by those estates worth more than £1 million. The inheritance tax system provides for individuals to gift substantial amounts—for example, shares in property—to others, including family members or carers. As long as no strings are attached to the gift, and the recipients survive for seven years after the gift is made, there would be no inheritance tax consequences. In doing that, the donor reduces both the potential value of their taxable estate in the case of their death and the possibility that their remaining assets will exceed the inheritance tax threshold and give rise to an inheritance tax liability when they die. Of course there are cases where inheritance tax is still payable. In those cases, we are really talking about the wealthy few with assets worth several times the average UK house price of £238,000.
I respect the wish of the noble Baroness to care for those who care for others. However, I hope she can see that she was in fact right when she said that the Care Bill was not the vehicle that she was seeking. I hope that she will accept that what she proposes would require a root-and-branch review of the whole tax and welfare system and that the Government and society show no sign of being persuaded that this is the right route to go down. Although the noble Baroness will be disappointed, I hope that noble Lords will accept that the Care Bill offers much in support of carers and that the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.