Welfare Reform Bill
12:00 pm
Jonathan Shaw: It is not just social care that we are talking about in terms of the possibilities. We have also referred to disabled facilities grants. One can envisage a number of education grants. There is also Supporting People. We can also see this in the context of care and support. We will be producing a Green Paper on what, one could argue, will be one of the most important pieces of social policy and change that we need, in terms of delivery and affordability. It would be wrong to constrain ourselves at this stage and cut off possibilities.
Of course, local authorities are at different stages. I think there is generally a consensus belief in the devolution of power and in local authorities making those decisions for themselves. Your prescription would fly in the face of that. We need to strike that balance. We have set out our stall and have been clear that that is the direction of travel that we want, but we cannot see this in the context of social care alone. We need to pull together other aspects and other funding streams. We know where we want to be and we need to provide the flexibility to bring people with us, and, importantly, involve disabled people.
Disabled people say to me—and I am sure that they say it to you, Mark—“Nothing about us without us.” That is absolutely right, hence the need for the trailblazing and piloting. In the previous evidence session rural matters were discussed, so we need to pilot in different areas to find out what works. We cannot limit this to social care. If we did, we could find ourselves having to come back for further legislation. The flexibility is built in and we need to establish what works in conjunction with disabled people and bring people with us.