Care Bill [Lords]

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I would like to say that I would have been shocked, but I know that the system just gets worse and worse each year as the pressure builds and corners have to be cut, and it is older people and their families who are paying the price. How can any “care” be given in five minutes? Of course it cannot. It does not make financial sense in the long run, because we have a care system that does not provide people with support in their own homes, buts leaves them to drift towards hospital, leaving our acute hospitals increasingly and unsustainably full of frail older people.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am slightly confused, because we have been called to the House today to debate the amendment tabled by the right hon. Gentleman, which states that this House

“declines to give a Second Reading to the Care Bill”,

but I thought I heard him tell the Secretary of State for Health earlier that he is not opposing the Bill’s Second Reading. Will he please clarify that?

[Andy Burnham]

I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman had been here long enough to know the difference by now. We will not oppose the Bill, in the sense that we will not vote against it on Second Reading, but it contains measures to which we simply cannot give a clear endorsement, as I will go on to explain. That is the purpose of our reasoned amendment. We will not oppose the Bill’s passage on Second Reading, which is why I objected to the Secretary of State misrepresenting my position.