Lord Scriven (LD)

My Lords, I rise to speak to a number of amendments that I have added my name to, particularly those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. In Committee, the whole issue of people with learning disabilities and autism caused a number of concerns. I note that the Minister has gone some way towards dealing with some of those concerns, and it is a tribute to her listening and enaction skills that progress has been made. I think it would be fair to say that there are still some concerns on Benches across the House about potential unintended consequences for people with learning disabilities and autism if the Bill goes through in its present form. In some areas, I would describe the statement from the Minister as, “It’ll be all right on the night”—but we know that, sometimes, it is not all right on the night, and things will happen. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, puts forward quite an important base for long-term segregation. There is no evidence that it has a long-term therapeutic benefit for people who have learning disabilities and autism, and so the provision for it still being there, without laser-focused monitoring and intervention, is a weakness. The Minister really has to convince the House that the Government have a plan to deal with this. The worry about having too much faith in the code of practice, as we found out in Committee, is that simple words such as “should” and “must” have very different meanings for whether or not there is a statutory obligation on an organisation. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s view on the focus in the code of practice and on strengthening the words used. Amendment 4, to which I have added my name, is something that the House should focus on and understand. Throughout the history of implementation of improvements in mental health and other areas where community carers come in, they have always fallen down on implementation, due to a lack of either funding or resources. Amendment 4 focuses on implementation. As the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has just said, in the Autism Act 2009 Committee, we heard from two witnesses who said there is a plethora of policy but it is always the plan on implementation that fails. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, focuses on that implementation and asks that the Government have a real plan to do that. It was worrying as we went through Committee, particularly when issues were raised about the numbers in the impact assessment, that the Minister pointed out that they are indicative. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, is required because, if we take a look at the trend of the percentage of total healthcare spend that has been allocated to mental health, including the Government’s announcement last week, we find that there have now been two years in which the total spend will be reduced. That means that some of the good ideas that the Government have mentioned with regard to the implementation of this Bill and community services are potentially at risk. I do not know whether the noble Baroness will press her amendment, but, if she does, she will have the support of these Benches. We think this is vital, and we are not quite convinced, unless the Minister says something to that effect from the Dispatch Box, that that crack—that real weakness—has been dealt with.