Hansard - United Kingdom Parliament

125 Pensions Bill [Lords]
20 JUNE 2011
Pensions Bill [Lords]
126
“What will happen to volunteers? What will happen to
carers?” Those are important questions, but they would
of course arise whenever state pension ages are raised—and
she supports a party that legislated to raise the pension
age to 68. She is right that these issues need to be
addressed, but they exist not specifically because of this
Bill but because of legislation that is already in place.
Mr Watts: Is it not a fact that, if the Minister accepted
the Opposition’s proposals, they would deal with the
short-term problem, the long-term problem and the
unfairness, and he would probably get more support
from his own party?
Steve Webb: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for
recognising that there is a long-term problem, which
not all his colleagues have done.
My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and
Stamford (Nick Boles) made the point that this is not
about the deficit. That is quite true—these measures do
not save us money in the current comprehensive spending
review period. However, I have a figure to present to the
House: £1.3 trillion. That is the national debt at the end
of this Parliament, even after our austerity measures.
That is the legacy; that is the reason we need to get a
grip on these matters.
As well as the 25 Members who spoke today, there
were two almost silent voices—especially silent in the
Opposition’s contributions. The first silent voice was
tomorrow’s taxpayer. Labour wants to put the Bill into
the 2030s. If we delay the changes, all these things will
have to be paid for by someone else. As long as it is not
the people who write to us—somebody else will pay,
and they do not write to us, so that is fine. That voice
needs to be heard.
The second voice that was not really heard much in
the debate—although a few coalition Members did
raise it—was that of employers. Of course, many of the
Bill’s measures on auto-enrolment are about easing the
burden it imposes, particularly on smaller firms, which
are crucial to our recovery and the fundamental
improvement of the economy. These measures strike a
balance. The waiting period gives employers time to get
people on the payroll. The threshold enables employers
to take on people on a lower wage, with less bureaucratic
burden. The voice of the employer and the costs and
burdens on business were issues that the Opposition
almost did not raise at all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central
(Jenny Willott) was very generous in her remarks, supporting
the measures on judges and on auto-enrolment. She
quite properly raised concerns about the state pension
age, but she made an important point about our state
pension reform agenda generally. There are two sides to
the state pension deal—when people get it and what
they get. One Opposition Member this evening described
the state pension as a pittance, but who oversaw it at
that level for 13 years? We have brought forward, in our
Green Paper, proposals for a single tier of state pensions
set above the level of the means test. That is one of our
reform options and that is the pension, if those proposals
go ahead, that every one of the women we have been
talking about today would get, so there is an issue about
when they get the pension, but there is also, crucially, an
issue about what they get. We are actively looking into
that and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it.
The hon. Member for Arfon asked about Allied Steel
and Wire workers and the financial assistance scheme. I
can confirm that I met them along with the Secretary of
State for Wales and Dr Ros Altmann, who has done a
huge amount of good work in this area, back in November
and that I wrote to update the Secretary of State last
week. We are aiming to provide forecasts for financial
assistance scheme members once the wind-up process
for schemes is completed. In the case of ASW, the
scheme is still winding up, so the financial assistance
scheme is not yet in a position to provide forecasts, but
we hope to make progress later this year. The hon.
Gentleman also asked about Dr Altmann’s ideas for
getting money into the scheme and we have looked at
trying to release value from annuities. That is not looking
as hopeful as we had hoped but we are working hard to
see if that can be done and I am grateful to the hon.
Gentleman for making the point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer)
gets the prize for making the sharpest intervention. He
pointed out to the shadow Secretary of State the legal
advice and comments made by my noble Friend Lord
Freud in the House of Lords on 30 March. I know that
my hon. Friend reads little else and I am grateful to him
for drawing those comments to our attention.
[Interruption.] As the right hon. Member for Birmingham,
Hodge Hill has asked the question, let me tell him the
answer before he asks again. My noble Friend was
responding to an amendment that would have slowed
the process at which we equalise the men’s and women’s
state pension age. The right hon. Gentleman will know
that we are on a process of equalisation, and the legal
issue is that we deviate from equalisation if at any point
we widen the gap. The coalition reference to moving
men in 2016 and women in 2020 would widen that gap.
The issue is directive 79/7, which
“deals with the progressive implementation of the principle of
equal treatment for men and women in matters of social security…Any
change we now wish to make needs to be considered in relation to
the position left by the 1995 Act.”—[Official Report, House of
Lords, 30 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1279.]
That is on the record and has been for several months.
Mr Byrne: I am grateful to the Minister for finally
setting out that legal advice to the House, but he must
answer this question: why was the commitment in the
coalition agreement if there was a law that made it
impossible?
Steve Webb: If it had been self-evidently not possible,
I think that the right hon. Gentleman would have
pointed it out in the past 12 months, but I have not
heard him do so.
The right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm
Wicks) made a characteristically thoughtful speech and
I hope that he is on the Public Bill Committee. That
would lengthen our proceedings, but in a very nice way.
He raised the important issue of the entitlement of
people with long years of national insurance payments
to a national insurance pension. He generously referred
to the fact that I taught his daughter at university; I
hope that I contributed in some way to her social
mobility as a result. He raised the serious issue of using
long periods of national insurance records. As my right
hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, the
records before 1975 are a mess, which the right hon.
Gentleman will know as he is one of my many predecessors.