Clause 16 - Short title, commencement and extent
Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Simon Burns (West Chelmsford, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 7, in
clause 16, page 8, line 38, after 'appoint', insert 'at the end of the period of at least 12 months beginning with the day on which it is passed'.
I shall be brief and hasty. The current provisions typify the problems that guillotine motions pose for the Opposition and Parliament. In due course, I shall explain why the amendment is crucial. First, however, let me say that we are 10 minutes from the final guillotine in this Committee, and it still remains to be seen whether any Labour Members will make a contribution at this late stage. The problem, however, is that we simply do not have enough time to discuss this fundamental issue.
Clause 16 deals with the Bill's short title and commencement. The Opposition are against part 1 root and branch. It introduces fines for local authorities, although the Minister has done her best to call those fines ''reimbursements'' and ''incentives'', among other things. Sadly, the Secretary of State totally undercut and undermined her position in his statement on NHS resources on the Floor of the House yesterday when, as is recorded in column 282 of Hansard, in answer to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam he used the phrase ''On paying fines''. There can be no clearer message to the House or local authorities that authorities are in the Government's firing line for penalisation through fines, frequently through no fault of their own. That is why Opposition Members believe that the Bill is being rushed through Parliament and on to the statute book using guillotines, and without proper scrutiny.
As a sop to some of his Back Benchers, the Secretary of State announced to the House on Second Reading that local authorities would receive £100 million a year over three years. In effect, the Government are taking money from the NHS and giving it to local authorities to pay the fines that they expect them to incur—they are taking from Peter to pay Paul. However, they Hohohey did not even get that right. They have provided £100 million, but local authorities calculate that they will have pay fines of £180 million in the first year—that projection is based on just over 50 per cent. of authorities. That coincides with the Government's estimate in the financial impact assessment of the cost of delayed discharges to the
NHS, although I understand that the two figures relate to different issues.
The £100 million will not solve the problem that the Secretary of State hopes it will. It also represents a missed opportunity. It would surely be far better to use the money to improve and enhance services, rather than to enable authorities to pay their fines. Furthermore, the money will be paid from the beginning of the next financial year, in April 2003. If the Government have their way, however, that will be when the Bill comes into force. I assume that they expect it to be on the statute book by the beginning of the next financial year.
It would be infinitely better, more sensible and more pragmatic, however, if, as amendment No. 7 suggests, the implementation and commencement of the Bill—if we must have it—were delayed by one year, but the local authorities got the £100 million from 1 April 2003. They would then have a year in which to use that money to invest—a favourite buzz word of the Minister's—improve and enhance the services to minimise and further reduce the delayed discharge numbers, and another year in which to strengthen the partnerships between local authorities and the NHS.