Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Nick Boles

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

First, I should tell Members that I am absolutely not a pensions expert; I have never spoken on the subject before in my life. I have therefore found this debate particularly enlightening, and I want to single out the speech of the right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) as it was extraordinarily illuminating and provoking. I hope Ministers will look at the issue he raised for the long term—after this Bill has been passed and changes have been made—and address the disparity between people who start work in their teens and those of us who are lucky enough to start work in our early to mid-20s.

I want to focus not so much on the detail of pensions, but rather on the context in which the Government are taking this Bill and its measures through Parliament. It is important to address that context because it explains so many of the difficult, controversial and even painful decisions the Government are making. It also informs and defines the approach taken by Her Majesty’s Opposition, which can be summarised by the refrain we have heard so eloquently and passionately from so many Opposition Members’ mouths tonight: it just is not fair.

Let us first consider the context from the Government’s point of view. Our strategy is simple. It is based on our reluctantly coming to the understanding that everyone in this country will suffer more—will suffer most, indeed—if the Government do not quickly deal with our unsustainable public finances. I use the term “unsustainable public finances” rather than “deficit” because it is important to understand that this is not just about dealing with the current deficit; it is also about putting in place a long-term platform of sustainable public finances. It is not about what we need to do between now and 2015; rather, it is about what we need to put in place for our country for the next two, three and four decades. The insight that everything must serve this overall objective of putting our public finances on a sustainable footing—

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Nick Boles]

Yes, I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend—even in mid-sentence.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He might address my point later in his speech, but does he agree that this issue is about not just public sector finances but a pension system that all our constituents can understand? Pensions is a very complex subject, as the Secretary of State said in opening, and many people do not understand the current system. Constituents who are in great need approach us when they finally receive their pension calculations and realise they might not have enough for the retirement they had planned.

[Nick Boles]

I entirely agree. Indeed, clarity, simplicity and dependability are what we seek to achieve in all areas of public policy, and when we do not have that we end up with the public finances we inherited from the last Government.

We should not be shy about admitting that the state of the public finances is leading us to make a whole series of decisions that unquestionably have rough edges. Nobody on the Government Benches wants to withdraw child benefit from people paying the higher rate of income tax. Nobody on the Government Benches wants to withdraw education maintenance allowance from people hoping to stay on in education after the age of 16. Nobody on the Government Benches wants to charge students of the future the full cost—up to £9,000 per annum—of studying at university. Nobody on the Government Benches wants to put up VAT, which is paid by everybody in this country regardless of their income. We do not want to do any of those things, and not a single one of those decisions has no rough edges, not a single one of those decisions has no victims and not a single one of those decisions treats everybody in the country equally.

We have never claimed that these decisions have no rough edges—that they do not have victims, and that they treat everyone equally—but we have claimed, and do claim, that each of the decisions is an essential part of the overall objective of putting our public finances on a sustainable basis. If these decisions are not made and implemented in full, all the people affected by them—the very same young people who will not be getting EMA, the very same students who will be paying tuition fees, the very same pensioners who will be receiving their pensions a bit later—will suffer far more.

The Opposition’s stance is very revealing. They could have decided to restrict their opposition over the past year and during the rest of this Parliament to those matters on which they have a profound ideological dispute with the Government. They could have decided to oppose the benefits cap, whereby in future nobody will get more than average income from benefits and which will make it clear to people that the only way to earn more than the average is to work for a living. They could have decided to oppose the universal credit, which demonstrates our view that we have to remove excessive means-testing from the benefits system in order to make work pay. They could have decided to oppose immigration controls, which illustrate our view that we need to restrict the entry of people into this country, so that it is British people who can go out and get the jobs that our recovery creates.

The Opposition could have decided to focus on and restrict their opposition to those matters, about which they have genuine ideological differences of opinion with us that I entirely respect. However, instead, they are choosing to oppose all the measures we are introducing—even those that are driven not by an ideological programme or by an attempt to reshape the way this country operates, but by a wish to rescue this country from a road to ruin.