How much should we pay for care?

It's been described as an oil tanker of a piece of legislation.

There are around 800 amendments alone for the Social Services and Well-being Bill.

It's the biggest piece of legislation to have gone through the assembly so far.

Unlike the Human Transplantation Bill, which introduced a system of presumed consent for organ donations, there's no one overriding principle here.

Instead, this could be seen as one giant tidying up exercise of a multitude of regulations and rules governing the care of the elderly, vulnerable children and the well being of carers themselves.

Up until this point, much of this has been done on an ad-hoc basis or covered by legislation for Wales and England.

Much of this provides a framework for Wales-only legislation for the first time.

The one big area it touches on is the eligibility of people to have the costs of their social care covered by local authorities and health boards.

Currently that can depend on where you live.

The big ticket item here is social care for the elderly, particularly in areas like dementia.

Care Forum Wales, the main body which represents care homes in Wales, says it will help remove the post-code lottery that governs the eligibility of social care.

But there's no answer to the question of what the exact criteria will be.

Crucial details like that will be worked out at a later date, much to the concern of the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Kirsty Williams who says there should already be some kind of indication of what the outcome of this policy will be.

The bill, being debated tonight, will continue its progress through the assembly next week.

One of the really big questions - separate to this bill - that remains unanswered is how the Welsh government will help families in future deal with some of the huge costs associated with social care.

In England there are plans to cap the amount the elderly will have to pay for social care at £75,000 in 2017.

There will also be a rise from £23,250 to £123,000 in the amount of assets people have before having to contribute to the costs of basic nursing care.

A decision by the Welsh government is expected later in the year.