Local Government Finance Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The phrase keeps going through my mind, “More haste, less speed”. It is no criticism of local authorities, but we have to remember that devising a means-tested benefit scheme is very complicated. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, councils face a difficult task in squaring a number of circles in devising schemes—and my noble friend Lord McKenzie outlined some of those circles and squares earlier. They have little experience or expertise in designing means-tested support schemes, and very little time to do it. It worries me that we are requiring local authorities to rush this process when they have to take account of so many factors in working out their means test, balancing all the different vulnerable groups that they are supposed to take into account while having their latitude squeezed by having to protect pensioners.

My noble friend Lord McKenzie pointed out that councils will have to take account of their child poverty needs assessments because they have a duty under the Child Poverty Act. A recent survey by 4Children found that fewer than half of English local authorities have a child poverty strategy in place, and 35 of those without a strategy do not even have a needs assessment, so presumably before they can work out their council tax benefit scheme they will have to do a child poverty needs assessment, which will slow things down as well. We will go on to talk about some of the other factors that they need to take into account—disabled people, carers and so forth. It really worries me that, all right, they may have schemes in place, but they will then have a year in which local people will be finding all sorts of holes in those schemes. It will not be us who suffer but local people in need.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I want to add one brief comment. If I understood correctly, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, suggested that the Committee should not try to press amendments that would delay the scheme because local authorities have already begun to consult on it. I do not want to overly stress the importance of Parliament, but surely the point of this exercise is for us to get the Bill right. If the Government have placed local authorities in a position where they are asking them to start the scheme so early that they are required to consult before Parliament has finished scrutiny of the Bill, surely that is a problem for us, not for them.

[Lord Tope]

I do not want this to turn into too much of a dialogue, but I said that I welcomed the amendments because it is important that we have this debate. Personally, I do not support them. They will not come to a vote today, but in the unlikely event that they come to a vote in October, which will be a bit late, I will not support them. I am not urging people to press them or not press them. As I said, I actually welcomed the amendments so that we could have the debate. I expressed a view on it, as we all do.

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Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

76: Clause 9, page 5, line 31, at end insert—
“( ) In exercising its powers under subsection (2)(b), the authority must have regard to the impact of the scheme on disabled people in the area.”

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 76A in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am grateful for a briefing from a variety of voluntary organisations, including Scope and Carers UK.

At present, national rules are clear, if not simple, on the treatment of disabled people and carers within means-tested benefits. These two amendments are designed to try to draw out for the greater understanding of the Grand Committee how those two categories of people will be treated under the new regime. At the moment, the equality impact assessment published by the Government suggests that nearly half of all council tax benefit is paid to households that may contain an adult claiming a disability-related benefit. The figure could be higher if it included disabled children. We are therefore talking about a significant proportion of the caseload now in receipt of council tax benefit and who may be presumed to be receiving council tax support in the future. This is not simply a marginal group.

At present, if someone receives income-related employment support allowance, they are passported on to maximum council tax benefit. If they have to be means-tested, some benefits and allowances are ignored completely—for example, the DLA care and mobility components, constant attendance allowance, exceptional severe disablement allowance, severe disablement occupational allowance paid because of an injury at work or a war injury or, indeed, mobility allowance paid under the war pensions scheme. In other words, the current council tax benefit makes significant provision to ensure that disabled people are given adequate support to enable them to meet their council tax liability.

I am sure that other noble Lords will be aware that there is considerable concern abroad among organisations that work with a variety of disabled people about what is going to happen in the future. The uncertainty out there is very worrying to disabled people and their families.

I anticipate that the Minister may reply that this is a matter entirely for local authorities. I base my predictive powers on his previous answers, but I may be completely wrong and I shall be delighted to be so. He may simply say that it is entirely up to local authorities how they should go about doing that; they have total freedom to decide how they treat disability in the council tax support schemes. However, I would like to test whether there are any limits to that freedom. To that end, I have some specific questions for the Minister. The various DCLG documents on localising support have been kind enough to remind local authorities of their various obligations under the Equality Act and other legislation such as the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986; under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which includes a range of duties relating to the welfare needs of disabled people; or, indeed, under the Housing Act 1996, which gives local authorities a duty to prevent homelessness, with special regard to vulnerable groups.

However, these documents are a little light on advice about what kind of scheme might meet the requirements of this assortment of legislation. We turn to the matter of guidance on what constitutes a vulnerable person at a later amendment, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollis, but meanwhile can the Minister advise the Committee to what extent disabled people currently entitled to council tax benefit are protected under equalities legislation? Do local authorities have to continue existing full exemptions or can they modify as they see fit? If they can modify as they see fit, would the Minister be content if some local authorities, for example, were to count DLA as being income for the purposes of council tax support, while others were not? If that were all right, we could find two people with identical conditions, identical incomes and identical circumstances, living in neighbouring boroughs whose entitlement to council tax support would differ solely because of which side of the line they came from. That may be true of other categories as well.

I want to explore the implications of that for a minute. We have all read the marvellous IFS report on the scheme. The IFS looks at the potential incentives that this change could give to local authorities in a variety of ways. In doing so, it identifies what the incentives could be, although it does not suggest that authorities would necessarily act intentionally based on those incentives. It suggests that the change could give an incentive to a local authority to discourage low-income families from living within its borders because it would be more expensive.

I wish to look at what the implications could be in this area. Let us suppose that there were a difference in entitlement to council tax support for someone receiving DLA on one side of the border compared with the other. The difference in cash may not be huge but may make a significant difference to the income of the person concerned. Would that constitute an incentive for disabled people in that circumstance to live on one side of the borough line rather than on the other? If it did, what might that do to other costs that might follow? I am thinking, for example, of the social care costs that might then be a liability to one authority rather than to another because of a desire of someone in that situation to live in one authority rather than in a neighbouring authority. Is that a policy consequence? If that were to happen, would the Minister be content with that? Is that simply part of what happens in a free market of local authorities determining what kind of support they give? Have the Government considered that? Perhaps the Minister could tell us.

Thirdly, what assessment have the Government made of the cumulative impact on disabled people of the variety of changes and cuts to benefits and services that have preceded this? In that respect, I wonder where the Minister thinks disabled people should go for advice on these schemes and where the best place would be for them to go to understand the implications of changes in council tax support.

Finally, the Government made it clear on the initial consultation that the rationale for seeking no change in council tax benefit payments for pensioners was that they would not expect them to seek paid employment to increase their income. However, the original consultation document I think went on to explain that there were other groups to whom the Government may wish to ensure that local authorities offer support, and that these groups might not be expected to increase their income through work. Given that certain benefits are given to people who are not expected to work by definition, could the Minister comment on the appropriate distinction for a local authority to choose to give full support to pensioners but not to someone who receives a disability benefit that says that they are not expected to work?

The implications of this could be significant. The local authority plans, as my noble friend described just now, to take potentially 20% off the top of the modest disability income of someone who has no ability to increase their income through work and has never been expected to pay council tax in the past. The implications for that individual and for the authority trying to collect money from that individual, through a range of enforcement mechanisms available to it, are only too easy to imagine. If any noble Lords have a failure of imagination, they may recall various noble Lords’ speeches about what happened with the poll tax when local authorities tried to extract money from some very poor families who were suffering a variety of problems.

Amendment 76A relates to carers. This is an area in which again I need some help from the Minister. Council tax is paid at a flat rate, regardless of how many people live in a property, but if only one person lives in a property, or no one who is treated as such, a discount can be applied to the bill. Noble Lords will realise that a number of people are disregarded and treated as not living in the property when calculating council tax. At the moment, a category of people are seen as carers who can be disregarded entirely when working out whether someone must pay council tax and, if so, how much should be paid. At present, to be disregarded as a carer, someone must provide care for at least 35 hours a week, live in the same property as the person they are caring for, and must not be the spouse, partner or parent when caring for a child aged under 18, and the person being cared for must either receive the highest rate of the care component of DLA or the higher rate of attendance allowance or constant attendance allowance.

I hope that I will be forgiven for reading all this into the record, but I want to understand what happens. Will any change be made to council tax liability for carers in that category when the new regime comes in? I am not referring to council tax support but to liability for council tax itself. It may be in the documents, and I apologise if I failed to find it, but otherwise I hope that the Minister will be able to explain the situation.

I could go on great length about the other implications for means-tested benefits and carers, but I shall put just one more specific question. How should local authorities treat carers’ allowance in deciding what council tax support should be available? The Minister may want to reply only in respect of the default scheme, but, as I say, I have not had an opportunity to look at it. How will carers’ allowance be treated in assessing entitlement to council tax support under the default scheme?

Carers are a group of people who have been struggling a lot over recent years. A Carers UK survey of over 4,000 heavy-end carers conducted last year showed that four in 10 were already in debt as a result of caring, that the stress of money worries was affecting the health of half of them, and that many were cutting back on essentials such as food. What assessment have the Government made of the likely impact on carers and the people they care for, and what will the costs be of providing social care should carers find that they are not in a position to carry on as a result of this change?

Finally, I should point out that I had originally considered tabling amendments that would try to draw out the impact on a number of categories of people. I could have tabled a similar amendment on the impact on child poverty, which my noble friend Lady Lister raised. I could have tabled an amendment on the impact on homelessness. I could have tabled an amendment on the impact on larger families. I mention this because it is easy to say that the Government want to protect certain categories of people, but, as my noble friend has just explained, if councils are to be encouraged to protect those in work, on whom should the burden fall?

I live in Durham, where the council is doing its absolute best to see how it can address the scheme well, but half of the current recipients of council tax benefit are pensioners, so if it did nothing else, it would mean a cut of 20% for the rest. Once the council takes account of higher levels of disability—in a very poor county—what should it do then? Should it try to protect those who are not expected to work? If so, who should pick up the benefit? If one takes into account the impact on child poverty in the area, again a very poor one, the council might feel that it has to take other steps. If we are not careful, we will end up with one family in Easington paying the entire council tax liability for the whole borough. I make a joke only to make a point. There will be a stage by which only so many circles can be squared.

There is a problem with simplicity. The Minister sought earlier to encourage us by saying that councils could set up simple schemes; they do not have to make complex ones. However, in welfare benefits, simplicity and fairness pull in opposite directions. When the Welfare Reform Bill was being considered in Grand Committee, I commented then that the best example of this is support for children. Child benefit is very simple but it is not fair. If it were the only kind of support, it would not be fair. Tax credits for children are very fair, but even I would not say that they are simple, and I was involved in designing them. I just said that child benefit is an example of something that is simple, but thanks to the recent changes it is going to be less simple. However, noble Lords will take the point. That is the difficulty in dealing with all these different categories. If a county council is to try to be fair to all these groups, not to mention protecting itself from potential legal challenge under the variety of legal instruments I have described, it is going to be difficult for it also to be simple. If it is going to be simple, it may struggle to deliver that by next April. I beg to move.

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[Earl Attlee]

The 0.4% refers to these specific reductions.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, tested us on the overall government policy. I am fully signed up to all government policy, as the noble Lord will know.

Amendment 76 would require local authorities to have regard to the impact of their scheme on disabled people in their area. This is an important consideration and local authorities already have responsibilities in relation to disabled people. These include their responsibilities under the public sector equality duty in Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 which requires authorities, in the exercise of their functions, to have due regard to equality between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not share it. Equality legislation explicitly recognises that disabled people’s needs may be different from those of non-disabled people. Therefore, public bodies should take account of disabled people’s disabilities when making decisions about policies or services. This might mean making reasonable adjustments, or in some cases treating disabled people more favourably than non-disabled people to meet their needs.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has already published guidance reminding local authorities of the statutory framework in which they operate and their existing responsibilities to people in vulnerable situations, including responsibilities under the equality duty. Therefore, I do not believe that an additional duty to have regard to the needs of disabled people is needed, especially when local authorities have an already established and understood framework of responsibilities.

Amendment 76A would require local authorities to have regard to the impact of its scheme on carers in the area. I was asked several questions about carers, including whether we would change existing relief for them. There are no plans to make any changes to the existing relief. I was also asked how the default scheme takes carers into account. The default scheme preserves the current CTB regime as far as possible. CTB makes provision for carers through a specific income disregard.

[Baroness Sherlock]

Before the Minister leaves that point, I want to be sure that I understand what he has just said. I specifically asked how carers’ allowance would be treated in the default scheme. Could he tell me how carers’ allowance is to be treated? Is he saying that there will be no changes from the current treatment under the default scheme?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I expect I shall get some inspiration on that point in a moment.

My noble friend Lady Browning asked how local authorities should have regard to the Autism Act. She raised local authorities’ other responsibilities, particularly in relation to the Act. That is precisely why we have not proposed a new and potentially cost-cutting definition. Local authorities have a range of duties that they will want to consider. My noble friend is right to point to the Autism Act as one of the key matters that needs to be considered.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, claimed that there was no reference to carers in the guidance. The guidance is not exhaustive. It highlights some key legal duties.

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[Earl Attlee]

It may help the Committee if I explain why I am experiencing such difficulties. The proposed amendment talks about disability in very general terms. If noble Lords table an amendment that deals specifically with their concern, I can address that concern specifically, but I am struggling to answer these very technical questions, which are too detailed for me to answer at the Dispatch Box. If I had a more detailed amendment, I could do so.

I would like to say a few more words about carers. Carers provide a vital role in society, and I expect that local authorities will want to consider what provision to make for this important group. Currently council tax benefit makes provision for people who are carers through a specific income disregard and a premium towards their applicable amount. Local authorities will be free to do so under localised council tax support.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is working with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that local authorities will continue to receive data on current benefits and universal credit. This could include data that would help local authorities to identify carers so that they are able to provide support in the future if they choose to do so under the terms of their schemes.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to making this a very interesting and useful debate. I have learnt much from it.

I am slightly smarting from the Minister’s criticism that my amendment is too general. By referring to disabled people in general, I was seeking to avoid detaining the Committee by tabling a whole succession of amendments dealing with a full range of disabilities, which I might reasonably have done; but I have learnt my lesson for the future. I shall look forward to visiting the Public Bill Office with more regularity in future.

I asked the Minister at least eight questions, and I do not think that I got answers to any of them, since “inspiration” did not arrive in time. I was not trying to ask technical questions; I was trying to draw out, so that the Committee could understand, what the implications of these changes are for some of the most vulnerable groups in our country in order that we might understand whether we needed on Report to seek to take any specific steps to protect those groups. Given that, I would be very grateful if the noble Earl, when his team has had the opportunity to reflect and to give him all the appropriate advice, would agree to pick up specifically the range of questions that I mentioned when he comes to write. I would add that, even though it might have sounded general, the point about the possible unintended consequences of having neighbouring authorities with different regimes and what that might do to drive both differential costs between authorities was particularly important. Although it might sound like a debating point, it was intended to try to find out to what extent the Government had modelled for that.

I urge the Government to reflect very carefully on the points raised by all noble Lords in this debate, but, this being Grand Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 76 withdrawn

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[Baroness Sherlock]

I would like to pick up where the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, left off because he made the point that I was going to make. I want to add just one thing. Irrespective of the debates about where the decisions should be located in general, the point about vulnerability is one that the Government brought into play. He said that the Government made a decision and said, in their own documentation:

“The Government has been clear that, in developing local council tax reduction schemes, vulnerable groups should be protected”.

The Government have put this issue out there, so it is not unreasonable for a local authority to say, “What do you mean by ‘vulnerable’?”. I spoke to one local authority last week that was extremely concerned that, almost irrespective of what definition it chooses, it will end up being subject to legal review because it will exclude some people, and it cannot imagine any way in which it could do that that would not have that consequence. In responding, the Minister may point out that a local authority could choose to adopt the default scheme and therefore the legal responsibility would lie with the Government, but that would work only if the authority has the resources available to be able to make good the difference. It does not apply to any other scheme or variation of it that it could take on.

I am very much with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who pointed out that there is a very real risk, in addition to the legal point, that the Government are raising expectations by reassuring everybody that vulnerable groups will be protected without explaining what that means. That makes it even harder for local councils to justify whatever decision they take that is short of the total quantum of vulnerability that could be defined out there.

I will make one final point, triggered by something that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said. One of the difficult areas in policy and one of the reasons why some decisions should be made centrally is that some kinds of vulnerability are not seen on a sufficiently large scale in an individual area for local councils to be expected reasonably to understand them and make prescriptions about them. It is analogous, perhaps, to health policy where, in commissioning, there will still be certain kinds of rare conditions that are dealt with centrally. Sometimes there are good policy reasons, even if one is being localist, to have guidance coming from the centre so that people can reasonably be expected to understand vulnerabilities that they may not encounter every day. Can the Minister perhaps address that as well?

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, I have found this debate and the ones previously on Amendments 76 and 76A fascinating. I need to remind noble Lords that I am still leader of Wigan Council. Therefore, for me, this is not a theoretical debate. I will have to determine a scheme within my authority, with colleagues, that will decide who is eligible, who is not eligible, which group will be regarded as vulnerable and which group will not be regarded as vulnerable. It will not be easy. I was going to say that it is not a zero-sum game, but I remind noble Lords that it is not even a minus 10% game; it is a minus 20% game if we exclude pensioners. So we are lucky in that sense.

I find myself agreeing with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said about localism. I recognise what he said and I agree with it. Where I would differ from him and what we need to recognise is that local authorities come at this with very different needs in terms of the number of people who are receiving council tax benefits, as has been said earlier, and the potential changes, as I mentioned earlier. I already know from being in this meeting that I have 100 more people who will be regarded as needing council tax benefits as a result of their factory closing this afternoon. So these things are changing all the time, and we need to recognise that.

I have had some interesting solutions to my dilemma from various quarters today, such as applying reserves. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is absolutely right. My treasurer is already coming to me to say, “You are going to lose probably £500,000 on your council tax collection because these people are not going to be able to afford to pay the cost, so you have to think about that”. We have talked about the problems of increasing demands on council tax benefits as it becomes a local thing, and I think that the noble Lord is right that we will do it much better than it is done at the moment, so that probably will encourage more people who do not claim at the moment to start to claim.

Earlier in this Bill we talked about the problems of business rates and the fact that they will have some risk element, so we will have to put that in. We talked about the flexibility of council tax, which is a very interesting phrase. Perhaps the Minister could let me know whether he means by “flexibility of council tax” that he is going to allow me to put the council tax up and is not going to require me to hold a referendum. I cannot believe that anyone sensible is going to say that they are going to have a referendum to put council tax benefits up: “Please vote for it and you will pay more council tax”. We would never win that, so it is not going to work.

We have heard that we should make further cuts. In my authority I am planning £66 million of cuts over four years. The Government thankfully gave me some warning and we have them in place. If I now have to make more cuts to accommodate all this—probably between £2.5 million and £3 million-worth—where are they going to come from? What have I got to do that I am not already looking at? I need to remind noble Lords that it is the vulnerable groups who rely most on councils’ services. If I cut services to vulnerable groups, they suffer. I can put up daily charges or raise the qualification for receiving social care. All these things affect vulnerable groups and there is no easy solution.

The difficulty for me is this. Presumably all the people we give council tax benefit to are regarded as vulnerable people, otherwise we should not be giving them that benefit. If we start to define vulnerability—here I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, as well as the comments of other noble Lords about the needs of different groups in communities—the danger is that we will define who are the deserving and the non-deserving poor. In the future, there will be people who get council tax benefit support and those who either get less or nothing.

A lot of vulnerable groups have strong lobbying sectors, but the ones who do not get that kind of support are the working poor. I remind the Committee that we are talking about a marginalised and alienated group in our society made up of people who do not vote very much at the moment. But they could be tempted to vote by extremists who say, “We will listen to you”. It is happening in certain communities. People are listening to those who are giving them false promises. We know that Respect, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, the BNP or whatever group it is will offer things that they cannot deliver. The result of this Bill and the way we will have to design the council tax support scheme will drive more and more people to the political extremes. Are we doing a good job here?

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I refer to the comments just made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and by one or two other Members of the Committee about the present situation. The noble Lord has defined people in poverty and children in poverty and what is happening now under a national scheme. It is not a scheme that is operated by local authorities but one that is operated nationally. I am sure that the noble Lord will have known of many people who have looked for disability allowance and carers’ allowance, who have not been granted them. Do not start by thinking that the current scheme is brilliant because it is not. There are certainly disparities across the country where there are different needs. There may be different needs in cities or in rural areas for children in poverty and children in need. It is for local authorities to decide where those vulnerable people are. There will be more disabled people and pensioners in one local authority than there will be in another. Would it not be right for that local authority to have the right to make the decisions on what is required and make a scheme according to what it knows and who lives in the area? We have had a long dissertation today on vulnerability but it actually turned out to be yet another go at the scheme itself.

The fact of the matter is that the council benefit scheme was removed entirely from universal credit and there is therefore not the slightest point in trying to equate the two and include the scheme again. We are dealing with a situation where localism and local authorities are going to deal with council tax benefit, otherwise there would not be any such benefit—or else there would have to be some form of top slicing to enable the money to be raised. Let us get real about this. Let us be absolutely clear what we are talking about. We are talking about putting the scheme locally because we believe—I accept that the Opposition does not—that local authorities can be trusted to develop schemes that are relevant to people in their areas.

The noble Baroness and one or two others talked about the dividing line between what happens regarding those schemes in Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Rotherham and Preston. Local authorities are already administering schemes. They make decisions daily on criteria regarding who is eligible for one scheme or another. They do that in relation to children, old people, health and public health. They are making decisions all the time. Why say that they cannot make decisions on this? Of course they can and they consider what schemes they should put together.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, produced 20 options. If I was putting together a scheme such as this, I would expect at least 50% of the options to be totally unacceptable. I would know that they were totally unacceptable and that they would never get further than the discussion stage. However, you have to look at those options and take them into account. We need to shift this discussion on to the basis of looking at what local authorities are doing and what they need to do. The council tax benefit scheme is already there with its criteria and all its ramifications. Local authorities know what the current scheme involves.

I simply do not accept the arguments that have been put. I very much thank my noble friend Lord Deben for one of his rare but gallant performances, and for providing some sparkling entertainment between him and the noble Baroness who moved the amendment. The whole discussion turned into an interesting event.

I have screeds of notes that I can tell you all about. Let us start with the setting of guidance on vulnerability, which the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, asked to be included in the Bill. I do not know of any guidance in a Bill, but I know that guidance can be positively directed. The guidance is out today and people can look at it to see what it involves. There is no definition of vulnerability, which needs to be dealt with at a local level. Local authorities are already working within the definitions and they know what they are. Noble Lords look sceptically at me, but if local authorities do not do that, they are not very good local authorities and it is time that someone took a decision about having them changed. Local authorities are well aware of their responsibilities and the guidance will help practitioners to understand the statutory framework in relation to vulnerable people because that is already there. We discussed that earlier when my noble friend Lord Attlee was answering from the Front Bench.

The guidance will remind local authorities of the statutory framework in which they operate and their existing responsibility in relation to people who are vulnerable. Those responsibilities are also included in the statutory duty. Local authorities will have to take account of the equality duty; that is very relevant to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about disabled people. They have a statutory responsibility to look at that in making local schemes and to have due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity between people who share the relevant protected characteristics. That is there and they will have to look at it.

I am sure that everybody here knows the relevant characteristics covered by the equality duty. They are age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex and sexual orientation. The disabled fall very clearly within those criteria. The equality duty is not prescriptive about the approach a public authority should take in order to comply with its legal obligation. However, authorities do have to think consciously about the need to do the things set out in the aims of that duty. I am sure that local authorities will not want to be found wanting under those circumstances. Carers are already covered under the legislation—I think it is this legislation. They will have to be taken into consideration in the same way as part of this.

[Baroness Sherlock]

Under what legislation are carers to be taken into account? I am not sure what the noble Baroness is referring to.

[Baroness Hanham]

Oh crumbs, I will stop swinging from the lights. The council tax benefit regulations take carers into account and I am sure that local authorities would want to do that.