Clause 49 - Preserved rights: transfer to local authorities of responsibilities as to accommodation
Health and Social Care Bill
9:00 pm
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
The amendments will ensure that local authorities are under a duty to identify people with preserved rights, to assess their care needs and to make community care provision for them after the repeal of section 26A of the National Assistance Act 1948. Section 26A established the preserved rights scheme.
Clause 49 requires local authorities to secure community care services for people with preserved rights. It also places an obligation on them to identify people with preserved rights and to carry out care assessments on them. As worded, the clause is linked to the requirement and responsibility to people to whom section 26A applied. However, subsection (1) repeals section 26A. That would mean that if, and when, the Bill received Royal Assent and came into force, section 26A would not apply to anyone. We do, of course, want local authorities to be under a duty to identify people with preserved rights and to make appropriate provision after the repeal of section 26A. That may be necessary where the details of someone with preserved rights reach the local authority's attention only after the system of preserved rights has ended. The amendments will ensure that local authorities remain under a duty to identify people with preserved rights and to make community care provision for them after the repeal of section 26A.
These amendments are purely technical and make sure that there are no loopholes that people under the preserved rights scheme might slip through. I hope that the Committee will be able to accept them.
Amendment agreed to.