Clause 28
9:45 am
Jonathan R Shaw (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People; Minister for the South East), Department for Work and Pensions; Chatham and Aylesford, Labour)
In common with Committee colleagues, it is also my pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess—I have never heard a Member say anything else. That will stand me in good stead.
I thank the hon. Member for Forest of Dean for the amendment. He is right to probe and I welcome the spirit in which he chose his words. I shall provide details of why we are not including children at this stage, but first I shall answer a question immediately. The hon. Gentleman referred to the pilots that DCSF is undertaking, and working closely with it during those pilots, DWP will test the alignment. I shall talk about that shortly.
We are committed to extending choice and control to disabled people, which includes the empowerment of disabled children, young people and their families. The DCSF pilots will begin soon, and their evaluation will seek to establish whether individual budgets enable families with disabled children to exercise more control and choice over the delivery of their support packages. It will also examine whether individual budgets improve outcomes for some or all disabled children and their families. The pilots will tell us which services and funding streams are suitable for inclusion in individual budgets for children.
Disabled children cannot exercise the same direct user control as many disabled adults. They have different needs from adults and access different services, which are provided under a different statutory framework. That is why a specific children’s pilot is required—to determine how best to ensure that the appropriate services are developed to meet children’s needs. There are also issues about how children’s rights to individual budgets interplay with the rights of parents, and how those rights interact with provisions in children’s legislation, so it is neither timely nor appropriate to introduce legislation before those issues have been explored further.