Lord Rix: My Lords, first, I must apologise for being absent from your Lordships’ House for the last 18 months, but a touch of cancer, a pleural effusion and other ghastly things which can happen to people approaching their 92nd birthday have, understandably, kept me otherwise occupied. It is of course people with a learning disability with whom I am most concerned. While there are some things to...
Lord Rix: I very much welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate. As my noble friend Lady Hollins said, it was almost a year ago that we were here debating the appalling health inequalities faced by people with a learning disability. Of course, that was in the context of the Government’s response to the Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities. In...
Lord Rix: My Lords, on behalf of learning disabled people and other vulnerable people I should like to thank the Government for making this amendment, which certainly ensures that their care will be greatly attended to in the future.
Lord Rix: My Lords, I cannot claim to be either a young widow or to have young children. My children are actually middle-aged but my wife died a year ago last week and I know perfectly well that a year is really not sufficient time to put to one side all the problems which arise from the death of a partner. I was married for 64 years and, both for my children—middle-aged as they may be—and for me,...
Lord Rix: My Lords, I warmly welcome the government amendments to Clauses 37 and 51 on social care and redress. I thank the Minister and officials most warmly for listening to the arguments from across the House and the sector and for improving the Bill accordingly. The government amendments move us closer to the holy grail of integrated education, health and social care. Making it clear that the...
Lord Rix: My Lords, what can the Government do to ensure that people with a learning disability receive voter registration forms in the easy-read format so that they can participate in the 2015 elections?
Lord Rix: My Lords, this is like opening a Christmas stocking, is it not? You are never quite sure what is going to come out next. The idea that we will be given time to discuss this matter in more detail before Third Reading is a promise which has great merit. To a certain extent it answers the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on his problems, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, who was asking for an...
Lord Rix: My Lords, Amendment 40A, supported by my noble friends Lord Low and Lady Hollins, seeks to create a single point of appeal across education, health and care. If we are to create a joined-up system across education, care and health, we must apply the same principle to an appeals process. The case was well made by noble Lords in Committee, and I know that the Minister sympathises with the...
Lord Rix: My Lords, I thank every noble Lord who spoke in support of this amendment. Clearly there is greater support than the number of noble Lords present at the moment and I most grateful, too, to the Minister for his response. I can only take him at his word, which I am sure is totally unassailable, and trust that the amendment that he brings forward at Third Reading will, indeed, support all of us...
Lord Rix: Noble Lords will have noticed, no doubt, that Amendment 38 would place a duty to deliver the social care element of the forthcoming education, health and care plans, which gives me an excuse to indulge for a short time in a worry that has bothered me for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, I began to have discussions with civil servants, politicians and administrators, particularly at the old...
Lord Rix: I fully understand the argument that the Government do not want a great list of what constitutes abuse. However, the Minister said earlier that it would be possible to give local authorities a batting order, as it were, of what is in legislation. I realise that abuse is covered in legislation, but would it be possible at least to make sure that local authorities do not suddenly think that...
Lord Rix: My Lords, I lend my support to Amendment 77, tabled by my noble friend Lady Greengross. I would also like to express astonishment that we seem to have reached the target for tonight before the dinner hour. My interest, of course, is with people with a learning disability and what is increasingly referred to as mate crime. This is where someone has befriended a person with a learning...
Lord Rix: My Lords, as president of Mencap, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, having rushed from the other Lord’s in St John’s Wood to support my noble friend Lady Hollins in her battle to achieve health equalities for learning-disabled people. As someone who has worked in the world of learning disability for more than 60 years, I am of course aware of the persistent...
Lord Rix: How is it that the commission found that people with disabilities and elderly people helped to make up the deficit? I would have thought that they were the very last people in this country who should forgo support from the state system.
Lord Rix: I would not necessarily put working-age people at the top of the list. I talked about disabled people. I was asking how the commission found that disabled people should be called upon to provide funding to support the pay-off of the deficit.
Lord Rix: My Lords, the Minister knows perfectly well where I stand because I already talked about eligibility at Second Reading and in the debate last week on the future funding of health and social care, led by my noble friend Lord Patel. I was backed in that part of the debate on the question of someone having to reach a level of substantial disability before becoming eligible for care. It should be...
Lord Rix: My Lords, as president of Mencap, I wish to focus on social care and the importance of a well funded system for disabled people. Indeed, one in three social care recipients is a working age disabled adult. Social care is of critical importance for around 143,000 people with a working disability who receive one or more of the social care services in England. Spending on social care services...
Lord Rix: My Lords, as we are approaching Statement time, I will be brief. I want to support the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, in her Amendment 88G, which advocates the need for advocacy. In the world of learning disability, advocacy is often totally essential. Information and advice which is not proportionate, frankly, can be quite useless. Advocacy may well come from parents and carers, but...
Lord Rix: My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 87ZB, so wholeheartedly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler. It would add providers of relevant services to the list of relevant partners of the local authority. The amendment lays the foundation for a number of amendments which I have tabled in the safeguarding section of the Bill, which will be taken later. There has been widespread concern...
Lord Rix: My Lords, having heard the words about Mencap spoken by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, I, as president, must of course support this amendment. I say “must”, but I am surprised that these amendments have to be tabled at all. I would have thought that any Bill dealing with care must deal absolutely explicitly with housing. After all, noble Lords will remember when the long-stay,...