Clause 4 - Disqualifications
Age-Related Payments Bill
10:00 am
Mr Nigel Waterson (Shadow Minister, Economic Affairs; Eastbourne, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
clause 4, page 3, line 12, leave out paragraph (a).
This is a probing amendment. Those are famous last words, but I am sure that there is a simple explanation, probably on the piece of paper that the Minister is proudly waving at me.
The clause states that people are disqualified from any of the £100 if they have been a hospital in-patient
''throughout the period of 52 weeks ending with the relevant week''.
Foolishly, I reached for the explanatory notes, which in their wonderfully delphic way state that
''subsection (1) prescribes the conditions under which individuals who would otherwise qualify for a payment will be disqualified from receiving a payment. These are (a) receiving free in-patient hospital treatment continuously for 52 weeks including the relevant week''.
All that does is recite the clause, which is all very helpful, but which does not take matters much further forward. I am sure that whoever produced the explanatory notes was working under great pressure, because there was no thought that they would have to produce them—or even the Bill—when this process started.
I am sure that the Minister is going to tell me that this is simply a read-across from council tax or other benefit regulations, and if that is the case, that is fine—although judging by the length of the reply that he is thumbing through, it might not be that simple. However, let us take as an example somebody with a chronic condition who could have been in hospital for the whole of the preceding year and then have come out. We would come back to the problem of the relevant week—of having a qualifying week in the first place. Perhaps that person had been bed-blocking, which is a massive problem in my local hospital. Apart from all these fines whizzing between different organisations, thanks to the ludicrous legislation that the Government have passed, there is the human problem of people who are perfectly fit to go home, but who cannot get out of hospital.
The Government have created a waiting list not only to get into hospital but, miraculously, to get out of hospital. It would be very unfair for somebody who was in hospital for the 52nd week and then discharged to get nothing, even if it were down to the failing of Government policy that they were in hospital when they were perfectly fit and ready to be discharged. There is a potential unfairness, and I will be interested to hear the Minister's explanation for it.