Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I add my voice to those of others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for her untiring efforts to change UN drugs policy. The UN thinks that she can change the world, and I have to tell your Lordships that, after many years' experience, it is wholly right. The past 10 years has seen some modest reduction in harms. I pay tribute to the work of the National Treatment Agency...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I support the Bill. First, however, I declare an interest as chair of St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London, which has been an enthusiastic advocate and implementer of the widening participation agenda. We started early, long before Alan Milburn advocated that the profession should take it more seriously. We have used what I know some have described as social...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I, too, warmly welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to his role on the Front Bench. I am sure that he will forgive me for saying that he has been practising diligently for this role for more than 10 years. We now have a Secretary of State and a Minister leading in the Lords in health who have a solid understanding of health policy. That is a great good fortune for those of us who work...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, the Cross Benches have barely said a word. I will speak for just two minutes in support of the Government. Listening to this debate, one would think that everybody who lived in south Norfolk or north Norfolk was against this order, and everybody who lived in the city of Norwich was for it. That is not the case. I live in the Waveney valley. The undulations may not be as great as...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, the Higher Education Funding Council for England has very wisely allowed flexibility for universities-I declare an interest as chairman of St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London. That being so, could we not return to the very serious case raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, that with such flexibility comes responsibility? Unfortunately in the past,...
Baroness Murphy: Does the Minister agree that reversing a successful policy after approximately 10 years by an announcement at a party conference at the end of September looks very much like a sodden sop, pre-election, to the public sector unions? What impact do the Government feel that this reversal of policy will have on the co-operation and competition panel? In my view, it is clear that it will have a...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I shall speak briefly to urge the Government not to accept these amendments. I find them quite shocking. Essentially, I would defend to the death the rights of religious groups and organisations to believe what they want to believe but, when it comes to how those religious groups behave in relation to the rest of society, they cannot exercise a right that so diminishes the rights of...
Baroness Murphy: I added my name to Amendments 26 and 28. It is important for us to explore this discretionary activity around reablement and how it will be implemented. This is also our opportunity to look at the Government's thinking on reablement. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, will not mind me teasing him for a moment, but I find it interesting that he called it "re-enablement". That is because...
Baroness Murphy: I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best. He is right about the importance of the built environment in order to support people receiving appropriate care. The other amendments all go to the difficulties of the definition of the problem and how it relates particularly to people suffering from mental health problems in addition to physical health problems. Activities of...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, follow that, as they say. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has three amendments in this group to which I have added my name, but I support all the amendments in this group. They go largely to delay and alter the style of implementation, giving the Government more time to do what they need to do to get this legislation in shape. It is the most important group of amendments that we have...
Baroness Murphy: I apologise profoundly that I was not here at the beginning of this debate-I was whipping through the previous group. Amendment 15 deals with the exercise of a discretion. Can the Minister tell me whether that refers to the reablement clause? I am not sure, from reading the Bill. My understanding is that the local authority might have a discretion when or not to insist on the reablement. If...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, has there been any specific financial modelling on our Amendment 7 regarding the impact of the new funding systems on other service streams? We have heard a lot about the interrelationships between care funding modalities.
Baroness Murphy: I would like to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, has just said about that element. I absolutely agree that it has always been an absurdity that nursing and care costs, both of which are related to the way in which an individual is cared for, should be separated. Any move away from those artificial and ridiculous distinctions is to be welcomed. My anxiety about this clause is that...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 7 and 10, and I support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. In these amendments, we want to explore the boundaries that are proposed, the knock-on effects on other funding systems, and particularly the rationale for providing care funds only for those living at home. This was criticised widely at Second Reading, and I want to point out that...
Baroness Murphy: I add my two penny worth to this amendment. I rather naively thought that there was a right of appeal; perhaps I have misunderstood. For example, there is a rather arbitrary cut-off point as regards whether a person receives half the attendance allowance or the full attendance allowance depending on the level of disability. The majority of appeals against the half-day rating are found for the...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I come at this Bill as a doctor who has for some 30 years worked in the community as a specialist with older people. I feel passionately about the serious inequities between the provision of health and social care and the seriously unjust system we have at the moment, so you would probably think that I would like this Bill. I am also quite supportive of the policy objective to allow...
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I am the only woman to speak in this debate, so it is perhaps appropriate that I take the "pouring the tea" role of looking at domestic matters inside this House. This House is not in a shape to be able to respond swiftly and effectively to the public's pressing demand that our democracy should be reinvigorated. We do not adhere to the fundamental principles of good corporate...
Baroness Murphy: What outcome measures will the Government adopt to monitor whether money given to primary care trusts and local authorities is wisely spent?
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, the fundamental principles underlying the Bill cannot be challenged and, in general, I give the Bill my support. For me, the most pressing area of need in the Bill is the intent to ban age discrimination in the provision of goods and services. I note that there will be further consultation on how that is to be achieved. I have belonged to a number of organisations which have decided...
Baroness Murphy: Does the Minister agree that, since one-third of older people admitted to hospital in an emergency are suffering from either a confusional state or dementia, the assessment and diagnosis of dementia in hospital and the solving of the problem which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, raised, must start at a very early point of diagnosis? At the moment, there is no such assessment in diagnosis...