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Mr. Davey: The current system examines a particular risk and assesses it with regard to the most vulnerable person who may come across such a risk, such as a stair problem for an elderly person or damp conditions for a young baby. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that, in all categories of analysis, the most vulnerable person should be someone with a disability? Column Number: 054 If so, what level of disability does he mean? However, given his use of the word ''targeted'', is he saying that, when the environment health officer examines the property occupied by a person with a disability, there should be a different way to assess the property for that occupant?Mr. Hayes: I mean the second of the two examples to which the hon. Gentleman referred. It is important to focus on ability or disability. I am not using the word ''disability'' in the sense that he is assuming that I am. I am not speaking only of disabled people. I am talking about people whose ability or disability in relation to a hazard may impact on their risk. Let us consider an elderly person living in a very well adapted home—perhaps relatively modern accommodation or a bungalow without stairs with all the necessary elements put in place to ensure that the person's life is as safe and convenient as possible. That person is certainly at less risk than a young person in a very old property that, based on the criteria before us today, does not satisfy reasonable modern safety standards. That situation is borne out by the information available to the Committee as well as other information that is available to the whole House. Yet because of the way in which the Government have taken age profile as the key criterion in the people-centred aspect of their approach, that would not necessarily count for a great deal. I want the Government to come up with a way of measuring ability or disability that allows us to target the guidance at different groups in the population that may be vulnerable. It is true that elderly people are often vulnerable, but many other groups are vulnerable too. It is important that we take account of that when implementing the new methodology. I would make the approach more effective to allow us to target better and make it easier for local authorities to enforce the new standards. I raised that matter when we were briefed on the subject and spoke to one of the academics involved in drawing up the new guidance. The essence of the response that I received, on which the Minister may want to elucidate, was that because of the complexity of what I have described, it was necessary to pick something to define the people at greatest risk, for the purposes of simplicity and to get something on the record—to make a start, as it were. Age was the thing to choose because, as I said, there is a correlation between age and risk. My worry about that approach is that it will miss out important sections of the population and important people in different communities, so it may be too crude an instrument. Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are other ways of dealing with the other disabilities, such as by providing aids, adapting properties and allocating property properly to ensure that people get the right type for them to use? Therefore it is right to confine the hazard assessment to the broad categories, based on age and the most general elements of hazard. Mr. Hayes: Yes, indeed, there are other ways of dealing with the problem. I commend to the hon. Lady the excellent document produced by McCarthy & Stone plc, ''A Better Life: Private Sheltered Housing Column Number: 055 and Independent Living for Older People''. She may have already read it. It makes it clear that there are many other ways of dealing with the issue. Sheltered housing is an effective way of providing appropriate accommodation that, at its best, minimises hazard and reduces risk. That is because it deals with the very issues identified in the provisions, such as fire risks, electrical problems, inappropriate staircases, damp, cold and all the other things that we know are of particular concern to older people because, as I said, of their propensity to illness or to be less able.Of course, there are other ways of dealing with the issue, but at the very heart of what we are being asked to consider and approve in Committee is the people-centred approach that the Minister identified, which the Government chose to found on a measurement that is relatively simple—one might say happily simple, or one might say sadly crude. They used the measure of age rather than a proper assessment of ability and disability that would draw in people with learning difficulties, those in other circumstances and those with a severe or chronic illness that had a real impact on their ability or disability, and therefore on their susceptibility to hazard and risks. We really need to make a proper assessment. As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton said when he asked about my argument, we are not talking about a simple suggestion that we count disabled people only, but a suggestion that we come to a better judgment on measuring ability or disability for the purposes of making the system work. That is at the heart of the group of amendments. They are designed to help, in that they in no way attempt to frustrate the Bill's intentions; indeed, they would make the measures more appropriate and effective. Nor are they designed to do anything other than what the Minister recommended, which is to enhance the objectivity and transparency of the system that the Government implement. They are not unhelpful, but vital amendments. If we are to set off down the road of the cultural change that I described earlier, it would be as well to do so properly at the outset. If we go down the road of measuring people's ability principally on the basis of age, the danger is that we shall never move beyond that. We were told that to do so was a good and appropriate start, and that it had the advantage of clarity, but there is a real risk that we shall not re-examine the issue with a view to improving how we measure ability. Given that local government officers will have a cultural change, that we shall have all sorts of difficulties, and that there are issues to do with cost, training and implementation, we must get it right. I have principally spoken about amendment No. 175, and I believe that it, in particular, will enable us to do that. Other amendments in the group are largely designed to tease out from the Minister a little more detail about the different types of hazard and their implications. I hope that he will do that. Column Number: 056
3.30 pmMr. Davey: I rise to move amendment No. 216— The Chairman: Order. You can speak to it but you cannot move it. Mr. Davey: Thank you, Mr. Pike. I will speak to amendment No. 216. It would prevent any regulations under proposed section (3A) being laid before Parliament until we were sure that version 2 had been properly piloted and the problems had been ironed out. The Government have undertaken a lot of consultation and analysis in order to get us to this point. However, unfortunately, version 1 of the system was found by their own consultants and various practitioners in the field to have a number of problems. Therefore, the Government have come up with version 2; they published their unfinalised draft version of the guidance last month. That shows that we are at a relatively early stage in getting to grips with version 2. We have not tried it out in the field. We have not discovered whether some of the many practical problems that were experienced with version 1 have been solved. Although lessons have been learned from what happened to version 1 and there have been some improvements, there are still many questions to ask. The Minister might throw back the following statement: ''We have been waiting for this for a long time, so let's get a move on.'' However, I am not asking for a long delay. By the time that the Bill passes through both Houses, receives Royal Assent and some of the regulations are in a form to be laid before the House, we could be well under way with the pilots and beginning to assess the results. In practice, the delay that I am asking for may last a few months; I am not asking for a wait of four years. If this House is to agree to the new system, it is important that it be reassured that the system can work. If version 1 had worked, I would not be as concerned. However, version 1 did not work. Therefore, we need to ensure that version 2 is practical. I am not the only person who has concerns about version 2; so do people from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and elsewhere. They and I are in favour of the basic thrust of the system. We are not trying to undermine it. During the clause 1 stand part debate, the Committee discussed a point that is particularly relevant to some of the amendments and to clause 2(1): the issue between numerical score and judgment. Even with some of the amendments that have been proposed, we are still pushed towards taking the numerical route in clause 2. Although the Minister's answer to the last debate was helpful, what he said—that the ultimate judgment is at the discretion and as a result of the professional expertise of the environmental officer—is not in the Bill. What will appear in due course when we consider the regulations are calculations and numerical scores. There is concern about that key part of the Government system that has not been tried. It is important that the House gets a chance to look at a report on whether it works before the regulations are implemented. That would be a good safety measure to include in the Bill. Column Number: 057 I shall briefly talk to some of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. He makes a good point about disability. It is understandable that the groups representing people with disabilities are concerned about whether the new system can be used to deal with some of the problems experienced by disabled people. Although I understand that, I agree with the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble): there might be better ways to get a better outcome for people with disabilities than to bolt on to the system something that has not been designed for it. That is why I asked the hon. Gentleman a question on that—although I suspect that I did not make myself clear enough. Even under his version of the system, which he says will work, one chooses the most vulnerable person for the particular hazard. He wants that to be judged on the degree of ability or disability. However, the Minister is talking about the ages of young and elderly people. The problem with going down the disabled route, however that is defined, is that there will not be all the necessary population data. We would be talking about a much smaller sample of the population than is the case with age, for which there are many people with disabilities in different parts of the spectrum. The system would have difficulty producing the consistent, transparent results that we want. To use disability for that purpose would be to destroy the system's underlying rationale and logic. I am speaking off the top of my head—I have not thought about this properly—but I wonder whether it would be possible to modify the system for occupancy. The system would generally work as it is described in the guidance, with the most vulnerable person, whether they were elderly or young, as the potential occupant. Perhaps a different set of measurements, likelihoods and so on could be applied to the enforcement officer's consideration of a property that is occupied by someone with a disability. I say that cautiously—I am not necessarily proposing it—because there are potential dangers. Landlords might discriminate against disabled people, so one must be careful. However, if one thinks about that idea, one sees the difficulty of using the system for purposes for which it was not designed. That brings me back to what the hon. Member for Northampton, North said. Perhaps we should tackle such problems differently. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings has done the Committee a service in raising ideas that help us think round the best way to approach the subject.
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