The speech catalysed a debate that was one of several strands leading to the Care in the Community initiative of the 1980s. In 1993, however, Powell claimed that his policy could have worked. He claimed the criminally insane should have never been released and that the problem was one of funding. He said the new way of caring for the mentally ill would cost more, not less, than the old way because community care was decentralised and intimate as well as being "more human". His successors had not, Powell claimed, provided the money for local authorities to spend on mental health care and therefore institutional care had been neglected while at the same time there was not any investment in community care.