Oral Answers to Questions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the huge work that he has done in encouraging apprenticeship starts. I know that he is particularly keen on that and I take a real steer from him. I also remind him and the House that, since we brought in our changes, over the past two academic years more than 950,000 apprenticeships have been offered by over 100,000 different employers. On top of that, the youth contract offers 160,000 wage incentives for those who wish to start apprenticeships. Therefore, the scheme has been a major success for this Government. The coalition has done far more than the previous Government.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the Secretary of State concede that the greatest barrier to returning to work is the lack of jobs locally and that that is particularly the case for people with long-term sickness and disability?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is right—those people face particular difficulties. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), referred to those earlier. Our job is to ensure that we help all those people to overcome those difficulties. Organisations such as Work Choice and Remploy, which are helping to get people back to work, are hugely important. We are making big strides in that regard. The simple answer is that still not enough people with disabilities are back in work, although the situation is improving. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We all want to ensure that disabled people join mainstream work and get a full life out of it.

Atos Healthcare

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on securing the debate, because there can hardly be an MP who has not had a constituency case involving Atos and the work capability assessment. The Members present in the Chamber are only a small sample of the people who have had to work with that system.

From my casework I find that the faults in the system fall into clear categories. First, as to the form of the assessment, there is insufficient information. That is a particular problem for decision makers, who are trying to take reasonable decisions without enough information. Information is also lost or disregarded. There are persistent complaints that Atos is working to targets to fail people, and about continual reassessments. Missed appointments are another issue. A couple of weeks ago, a constituent of mine stayed in all day, and the doctor did not turn up. I turned up, by the way, and wasted a couple of hours of my time. My constituent will not complain, because he is scared to do so. He does not want the attentions of the Atos doctor again, thank you very much.

As to the content of assessments, to give a snapshot of something we have already heard about, it is unsubtle—it consists of ticking boxes, and it does not work well with intermittent conditions. There are questions about the competence of Atos staff to assess mental illness, for example. In another constituency case, apparently, the doctor involved was not allowed by the medical authorities to work with patients or perform any form of medical intervention, apart from undertaking Atos assessments.

There has, I concede, been some improvement since the Harrington review. However, it is interesting to consider the nature of the mistakes that the system produces. For example, I was told by my local citizens advice bureau that since April it has launched 62 appeals, of which it has won three and lost two; the rest are still pending. That is a common experience for MPs. Incidentally, as a Welsh MP, I have been told that appeals in Welsh are taking longer, and I would like some response on that issue.

Atos should be put into special measures. It should report frequently—monthly, perhaps—on the number and percentage of cases that lead to appeal and to a change in the decision, and also on the number and percentage of revolving-door appeals. Most importantly for the public debate, we should have some qualitative information about people’s experiences. I think that that would influence the public debate on disability and benefits in a positive way, given the current climate fostered by some newspapers and commentators, and by Government policy.

Crisis Loan Funding

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Whiteford]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a salient point, which backs up the point I am making.

I want to look back a little further, using information that had to be obtained from the Government under a freedom of information request by a non-profit company called Full Fact. Looking at that, we can see that, in reality, prior to 2006-07 and the start of the banking crisis, the amount spent on crisis loans was remarkably stable between 2000 and 2005-06. During that period, the gross amount spent on crisis loans did not fluctuate—up or down—by more than 5%, and spending dropped in 2003-04 and the following year. Although overall there was a slight upward trend prior to 2007, it would be misleading to compare that with the dramatic increase in applications and expenditure once people started to experience hardship, as work dried up and costs for basic foods and heating started to rise. I am concerned that we are still in that position and that we can expect demand to continue to rise for as long as the economic turmoil continues.

I am struck by briefings from Citizens Advice Scotland and others that outline the wide range of circumstances in which people try to access the social fund. Those seeking crisis loans and community care grants include people moving into independent living and those who need basic furniture to set up home after a family breakdown or a period of homelessness. They also include people with employment problems, those with complex benefits claims, who are caught in the quagmire of the system with no immediate source of money for food or heating until their claim is resolved, and those who incur unexpected travel costs due to the illness or hospitalisation of a close relative.

Those eligible for crisis loans face a wide range of circumstances, but what they all have in common are cash flow problems, compounded by an underlying low income. That is a temporary state of affairs for some, but some others, such as those who are disabled or have long-term health problems, have little financial resilience to deal with unexpected costs. They have limited means to absorb financial shocks, such as the cooker or fridge breaking down or the aftermath of exceptional events such as burst pipes or a break-in. Burst pipe problems came home to me in the past couple of very severe winters. People living in homes that are not well heated are often those who would particularly struggle if faced with having to redecorate or get a new carpet. Such events are not only a burden on those on very low incomes, but on anybody living on a modest income who has to count the pennies.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the hon. Lady share my despair at the report in The Guardian today and the series of reports that will come out this week? About 3.5 million families are one step away from disaster. They have no resources, no savings and are potential claimants of the social fund. The potential is enormous.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is well made. There are connections to be made across a wide range of policy agendas. His point is particularly important because it acknowledges that the prolonged economic stagnation we are experiencing has eroded the savings and assets of many, not only the unemployed or disabled. For the very poorest however, things have become a lot more precarious. I am sure that many MPs here today will have cases in their constituencies and can think of people who have been living an insecure, hand-to-mouth existence for some time, because work is so hard to find in the current circumstances.

The situation with crisis loans presents us with risks and challenges. Welfare organisations have expressed marked concerns about what will happen in practice when the social fund disappears. Their chief concerns relate to ring-fencing and whether set eligibility criteria and binding policy guidance will be attached to the funding allocations. They fear that without ring-fencing and clear guidance, big disparities could emerge in different parts of the UK and that, at a time of substantial cuts in the public sector, it will be all too easy for allocated funding to be absorbed into more general social work budgets or used to plug funding shortfalls elsewhere.

Those are legitimate, serious concerns. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity today to offer reassurance that they will put in place robust measures to ensure that there is good provision across the country and to prevent wide divergences emerging.

Employment Support

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that employers have a vital role to play. All hon. Members will know that there is a great deal more work to do to help employers to understand the very valuable contribution that disabled people bring to the workplace. I am working hard with many disabled people and disabled people’s organisations. Through our new disability strategy, we will ensure that we continue to work with employers to ensure that they see the advantages of employing disabled people, and through our additional support for Access to Work there will be tangible financial support.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

So the Minister’s big idea for getting people who are disabled back into work is to start by giving them the sack. There are three factors in Wales being hit hard: seven of the nine Remploy factories in Wales will close; 272 of the 752 employees are in Wales; and jobs are being lost in communities that already face mass worklessness, such as Merthyr Tydfil, Aberdare and Abertillery. What consideration did the Minister give to human costs before making her announcement, or was her only thought the cold logic of the balance sheet?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to me earlier, because we are talking about supporting more disabled people into employment. As a result of the announcements we have made today, 8,000 more disabled people can seek the support that will make the difference between them being able to get into work and facing a lifetime on benefits. Disabled people in this country should not face a choice between a lifetime on benefits and a job in a segregated factory. They deserve to be able to work for employers such as BT, Royal Mail, Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer, all of which are actively working with Remploy employment services to get people—not only in Wales, but throughout the country—into employment.

CPI/RPI Pensions Uprating

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

Indeed. When people say that HSBC’s £14 billion profit is indefensible, I make the case that for somebody with a private pension, that profit is impressive because the greater the profits, the better the pension provision for people who are saving for their retirement.

The proposed changes have to be looked at in context. The triple lock should be welcomed. It has been semi-dismissed by Opposition Members today. They talk about the importance of the RPI link, but under the previous Government, the RPI link resulted in a 75p increase in the state pension. Under this Government, with the triple lock in place, the increase will be £5.35 in the coming financial year. Anybody who says that that change is not worth while should talk to pensioners in my constituency who are grateful for the additional £5.35 that they will receive.

We have also heard about the impact of the change from RPI to CPI on people in the public sector who are planning for their retirement. I heard about that at first hand when I took part in a phone-in programme on Radio Cymru. I was contacted by the headmaster of a very good school in the constituency of the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). He stated that the changes were completely and utterly unacceptable because he would lose almost £80,000. People who called in to respond to that were flabbergasted that somebody could lose £80,000 as a result of the change, because it brought home to them the difference between the provision that they were able to pay for through their own saving and what was available in the public sector. The average private sector pension pot is £30,000. To hear of somebody losing £80,000 as a result of one technical change was shocking to the majority of people.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

How typical does the hon. Gentleman think that head teacher is of pensioners in my constituency, in which he lives, and of pensioners in his constituency, which is full of people on public sector pensions?

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Of course the individual in question is not typical, but I am afraid that the sense of entitlement he portrayed in that conversation is typical of a public sector that does not understand that the average wage is about £4,000 higher in the public sector than in the private sector, excluding pension provisions.

I am not attacking the public sector. I—and others—am trying to highlight the fact that public sector provision is significantly better than the provision for the majority of the population. In their changes to public sector provision, the Government are not attacking the concept of a defined benefit pension scheme. They are introducing proposals that will ensure the survival of defined benefit pensions. The truth is that we cannot carry on with a situation in which the majority of the population are expected to live in very difficult circumstances when they retire, yet their taxes are used to support unaffordable pension schemes.

By getting to grips with the need to change the retirement age and increase public sector workers’ contributions to their pension pots, the Government are putting their pensions on a more secure footing by ensuring that they will be available in the long term. They are also ensuring that the feeling of unfairness about the difference between private and public sector provision is reduced. Private sector workers will see that public sector workers are now making a greater contribution to their own pension provision. It will still be less than the taxpayer contribution, but it will be greater than before. In that context, I applaud what the Government are doing.

It is very difficult to accept the comments that Opposition Members make when we highlight the positive changes that the Government have made. Those who have spoken in the debate have said that the weaknesses that we point out in the Labour Government’s performance between 1997 and 2010 do not reflect their position. Clearly they do not reflect the position of the majority of Labour Members, because they are not here to defend their track record. I accept entirely that the Members who have spoken in the debate are genuine about wanting to protect RPI, but the majority of their fellow Labour Members are not here. For 13 years, when they could have done something about the decline of the UK pensions sector and private sector provision, they took no action.

One thing that really damages confidence is the fact that many people who saved in private sector pension funds remember being told that the raid on their pensions was to get young people back into work, yet we all know that youth unemployment was higher in 2010 than in 1997. Even the reason behind the raid on private sector provision was a failed policy of the Labour Government.

I wish to touch quickly on the unions’ decision to challenge the changes. I find it very difficult to understand why any changes to public sector provision are challenged in the High Court, yet people working for private companies have accepted changes as a necessary means of ensuring that they carry on getting the support that they want from their pension provision. For example, my best man works for HSBC. He left school to work there at 17 years old, and I told him he should not have done it. However, going to the bank was a job for life and he was happy to take the opportunity. He started off contributing nothing to his pension fund. Now, he contributes a significant percentage and carries on doing so because he values the fact that he will get a worthwhile pension. People working for a private company understand that they will have to contribute to the benefit that they will get. I do not understand why the unions cannot see that the same is true of public sector workers.

We should at least welcome the fact that the unions, in challenging the decision at the High Court, used their members’ funds for their proper purpose, which is to defend their members. They might have been mistaken, but at least they were using their members’ funds to try to change a policy that they perceived to be unfair. That is a big change, because most of the time they appear to use them to bankroll the Labour party.

It is important to point out that the Unite union, for example, which has been prominent in challenging the changes, contributed £5.2 million to the Labour party in 2010 and a further £2.6 million in the first three quarters of 2011. As Unite is such an influential funder of the Labour party, and as it was willing to take court action against the Government’s proposals to move from CPI to RPI, I wonder what influence it brought to bear on the Labour party when Labour decided to move its own staff’s pension provision from RPI to CPI. I would be delighted if Unite sent out a press release explaining how it fought against the Labour party’s internal decision to move from RPI to CPI, but I suspect that we will hear nothing.

Labour Members who signed the motion have been singularly unsuccessful in changing the Labour party’s position. That is a fundamental point. When it comes to the Labour party’s financial needs, we hear nothing, but when it comes to saying that the taxpayer should fund the difference, the Labour party is willing to protest and people are willing to sign motions.

I note that other parties support the motion, and that two Plaid Cymru Members have signed it. My understanding—I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong—is that the Labour party is moving towards defined pension provision based on CPI, not RPI, but that Plaid Cymru members of staff are in a money purchase scheme. Again, Plaid Cymru is happy to use taxpayers’ money to make a political point, but not willing to find the funding to protect its staff. That is the hypocrisy behind the motion, which I oppose.

Work Capability Assessments

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) for introducing the debate and I thank other hon. Members for the way they have spoken on behalf of their constituents on an issue of genuine national interest. We could all, across parties, cite chapter and verse on the people who come to our surgeries and citizens advice bureaux who have been made desperate by the system’s failings. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) made the point that if the same situation occurred under a Labour Administration—the Minister has inherited some of this, but the national roll-out before we have solved the problems is a significant issue—we would say the same thing to a Labour Minister: how do we change this to make it work?

I have not only seen constituents, but have regularly been to appeals and seen Atos do assessments as well. I have seen the process first hand all the way through, not only when the constituent arrives in my office and says, “What is happening? Why is my life being destroyed for months while my benefits are suspended? I’m taken off benefits and then seven months later, my appeal goes through successfully, along with a huge proportion of others.” I have seen the process, and as a former Minister who was previously employed in private industry looking at systems management, I can tell the Minister that this is not working. There is a genuine issue and the process and procedures are not fit for purpose—it is so damn obvious when there is this number of successful appeals.

The underlying principle that the Minister must work with is compassion, and we would support him in that, but the system lacks compassion. It has to be fair to both taxpayers—a point made earlier—and those who are going through the process. There are people who are unable to elucidate their circumstances fully when they fill in a form and who are not going to give 101% when they sit in front of somebody tapping into a computer keyboard without making eye contact. There are doctors who will not spend 15 minutes filling in the long narrative history of a medical condition that would lead to the right decision in the first place. Therefore, when people fill in the form for the first time, the vast majority do not fill it in in the detail needed. It is a tick-box exercise, and people have a lot of fear and misunderstanding over that. They tend to come to us, as MPs, after they have failed and are going in for the interview. We say to them, “Take someone in with you, because at least then they can give you some support and guidance.”

The system must be based on compassion, and at the moment, it is not. I say that because I have seen the Atos procedure and the interview, and interestingly, even though I went into the office in Bridgend to see it, I was not allowed to sit and watch an interview, even if somebody was willing, but I could see the appeals. The staff were very kind and as informative as they could be. I was allowed to watch an abbreviated recording of a mock-up interview, in which we saw minimal eye contact, because there cannot be eye contact when someone is tapping away at a keyboard and asking, “How did you get here today? Oh, so you did that,” and then goes on to the next question and the next. It is completely different from the panel. I was allowed to sit and watch it taking place for three hours, with four people—lay people, someone from a medical background and someone from a legal or judicial background—genuinely dealing with individuals with compassion.

I shall give the Minister an illustration of what should be happening to cut the cost for the taxpayer further downstream. A young chap walked in and sat down looking completely healthy. He was in his early 20s. He had someone with him, as one should have at an appeal. The panel started asking him questions. He looked completely fit. “Do you go out with your friends?” “Yeah, I go out with my friends.” “Do you socialise regularly?” “Yeah, I tend to go out every Friday night.” Based on those kinds of questions and the fact that he could walk a certain distance, that guy had been declared completely fit for work. When a gentleman on the appeal panel asked him where he lived, he replied, “Merthyr.” The panel just happened to know Merthyr. “Where do you go out in Merthyr?” “Town centre.” “When you go out socialising with your friends on a Friday night, where do you go? Do you go to clubs?” “No, we don’t do that. We just mooch around town.” “Where do you go?” “We get off the bus and walk right to the centre of town.” “How far is that?” “From the bus to the town centre is about 50 yards.” “I know Merthyr quite well, so do you then go to the rugby field?” “No, I don’t.” “Why not?” “Because if I walk more then 50 yards, I not only get out of breath, but collapse with the condition I have.” None of that detail comes out in the initial stages. I am not saying that we have to flip the process round completely, but its lack of compassion, tick-box nature, lack of fairness to the taxpayer in allowing costs to escalate down the chain and to the individual, and the concerns over good decision making and managerial process mean that it simply is not working.

My message to the Minister is straightforward. The worst thing in the debate would be for him to go into denial or to say that the system is bedding in or just needs a bit of tweaking. There are fundamental issues with the design of the process, and the number of appeals that are successful when the right information is in place and the sheer superficiality of the initial contact with Atos show that the system is not working. I note the earlier comments about whether Atos follows procedures correctly. Whether the problems are inherited or caused by the new work capability assessment or by the national roll-out, the procedures at the Atos end are simply wholly inadequate.

The Minister could save the taxpayer a lot of money if he got this right. He could save a lot of angst and worry, not only for those with fluctuating conditions, sensory impairment or other needs, but for those who are genuinely trying to be honest and fair about their condition and those who want to work if they are fairly assessed. At the moment there is a terror of going through the process. When people come to my office now, I cannot give them a lot of hope, as an MP, about fairness in the system.

My hon. Friends have mentioned the statistics and the national analysis by Citizens Advice and others. As much as the press loves to scaremonger and paint pictures that vilify some of these people and their “scrounger mentality”—“Get them back into work!”—there are many people who want to get back to work and many others who are being unfairly put through pain and anguish when they should not be, such as those suffering from long-term conditions.

Redesign the system, so that it has compassion and is expert-led at the gateway, and improve communication between the Departments. Do not go into denial. This is not a matter of blame. We do not blame the Minister, but we will if he does not solve the problem, because it is now on his watch. We will applaud him if he can turn this round, because we also want people back in work. The great innovation was to turn the system round to take the emphasis away from incapacity and towards capacity—what can people do? There is cross-party support for that, but the changes must be driven with compassion and fairness all the way through. At the moment, the system is wasteful, inexpert and, in terms of processes and management, shot full of holes. Please make it fit for purpose and we will be here in six months applauding you.

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Order. I have no power whatsoever to make it fit for purpose. The hon. Gentleman’s remarks should be directed to the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I know that the hon. Gentleman had written his question before he heard the answer, but the social fund is not being abolished. The new system under universal credit of payments on account will actually be more flexible, allowing people to draw down their universal credit ahead of time. That will be more efficient than the current rigid system of crisis loans.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

What discussions has the Minister had with the Welsh and Scottish Governments about the transfer of some responsibilities to local authorities and with what result?

[Steve Webb]

We are localising to English local authorities and, as the hon. Gentleman says, to the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly. We take the view—we have had a positive response on this from the Welsh Assembly—that the ability to shape a system for Wales is welcomed. Whether the Welsh Assembly chooses to do that through Welsh local authorities or at a national level in Wales will be a matter for it.

Benefits Uprating

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Not only does the pensions boost help women, but the pension credit boost helps women. Reflecting on the Opposition’s question about the combined effect of our measures, it is worth saying that the one measure excluded from that question was the VAT rise. They excluded that because men, on average, have higher incomes and higher spending. In particular, they have higher spending on VATables, so the impact of the VAT rise hits men more than women. For some reason, the Opposition did not count that measure.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

May I welcome the Government’s decision on the mobility component? That is vindication of the wide campaign on this issue, which included my early-day motion and the 88-odd Members who signed it. On a slightly more incredulous note, would the Minister claim that the move to CPI and the large savings to Government expenditure are entirely coincidental?

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. That is an issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) often raises: averages can hide great disparities in social class as well as gender. That is a very important issue and I am sure the Minister is well aware of it.

The principle of reasonable notice is broken by the Bill. The Government’s concessions do not meet the fair and proper notice test, which is a principle of crucial importance. The second test we set for the Government was the proportionality test. They are unfairly and disproportionately singling out women aged 57 and 58 for harsher treatment. I do not suggest that they have singled them out deliberately—of course not—but I do say that they are not doing enough to compensate those women who have lost out in a birth date lottery that is not of their making. These women cannot, on the whole, afford the burden that the Government are placing on them, and they have certainly done nothing to deserve it. The Government should not make those women carry the heaviest burden of rising longevity—that is unfair and unjust. Some 500,000 women will still have to wait between a year and 18 months longer than they would have to reach state pension age. As I have previously stated, 330,000 women—one third of a million—will have to wait exactly 18 months longer, with the psychological and financial burdens that imposes.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

There is a further, regional unfairness in relation to the availability of work. If people are to work for longer, where are the jobs to come from? That will affect the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and mine as well as those in the north-east of England and many other places. Also, if people are filling jobs at the ages of 65 and 66, the knock-on effects on youth unemployment will be substantial.

[Gregg McClymont]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. If women and men are to work for longer, we have to look at the figures for employment. My understanding is that up to 38% of women aged between 56 and 60 are not in employment at the moment. That is a real issue, which I am sure the Minister is considering.

The Bill fails the two tests, in that it is unfair and there is an undue lack of notice. It also fails the proportionality test. Take the case of Laura Davis, who is 57, single and suffers from a heart condition and acute osteoarthritis, which hampers her mobility. She works full time but her commute is a struggle. She was hoping for a dramatic revision of the Pensions Bill’s terms. Laura, from Watford, Hertfordshire says:

“It is a shame the Government could not meet us half way and say that no one in my age group would be required to work longer than a further 12 months….That would have been a better compromise.”

That is a compromise that the Opposition suggest, and it is why we seek to amend the Bill through our amendments to part 1, which I shall now address.

Our amendments do meet the tests of due notice and fair treatment for those half million women, and would ensure that no women would wait more than an extra 12 months to reach their state pension age. Our amendments would also bring forward the uplift in state pension age to 66 for both men and women, from 2026 to 2022, because we recognise that, as the Minister and other Government Members have emphasised, this is a difficult issue. There are no simple answers, and tough decisions will have to be taken. Our amendments would balance the sustainability of the pension system with the need to treat all women fairly. They offer a substantial saving of £20 billion, but not at the expense of those women. As I emphasised earlier in response to some amendments, the difference in annual savings from our amendments versus the Government’s is equivalent to 0.1% of central Government spending in 2011-12, or 1.3% of the Government’s annual pensions budget. Given the undue, disproportionate and unfair burden being placed on such women, I do not think that is too high a price to pay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Willott]

I will make some progress first.

That problem makes it extremely difficult for small changes to be made. Given the financial circumstances, with the issues of debt and deficit that we have discussed, and the fact that other Departments are asking for money in the millions rather than the billions, convincing Treasury officials to be more generous cannot be easy. I hope that all hon. Members appreciate that the £1 billion going to these 500,000 people is a significant amount of money that has been found by the Government.

[Hywel Williams]

From the tenor of the hon. Lady’s remarks, it sounds as though she is satisfied with the concession that the Minister has achieved. I congratulate him on the distance that he has gone and I do not underestimate the difficulties. However, is the hon. Lady confident that the women in her constituency who will still be affected will be as easily persuaded as her?

[Jenny Willott]

I was just going to move on to the fact that, although I am delighted by the changes, in an ideal world I would have liked us to go further. I would have liked to see the cap closer to 12 months than 18 months, but we are not in an ideal world and the cost associated with that would have been significant. I understand that the cost of capping at 12 months would have been close to £3 billion, which would have been a significant amount of money to find. That would have been an uphill struggle. We have to appreciate the scale of the money that has been found to make things better for the women who are worst affected.

There has been a broad coalition campaigning on this subject, including Age UK, Saga and Members of all parties. Some have been extremely constructive in their campaigning and in the pressure that they have put on the Government, whereas others have been slightly less constructive at times. Some of what the Labour party has proposed today is, I think, unrealistic. It is unhelpful to the attempt to make as much progress as we would like towards helping the women who are most affected.

The Labour amendments tabled in Committee and today on Report that would delay the entire increase by two years are not sensible or realistic. Regardless of what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East says, £10 billion would be a huge black hole in the public finances, and it would be a significant amount that the Government would have to find. [Interruption.] I am told that it would be closer to £11 billion. I am not going to start the debt versus deficit debate again, but there would be a huge black hole if we accepted a Labour party proposal that would require an unfunded promise of £11 billion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Malcolm Wicks]

That is the concern. Ironically, we are having this debate while the spectre of mass unemployment—as Liberals will remember, William Beveridge called it the giant evil of idleness—rears its ugly head, yet we are accelerating the increase in the age at which people will get their retirement pension.

[Hywel Williams]

The geographical variation is extremely gross if one adds in people who are economically inactive. The proportion of people who are economically inactive varies from place to place. Merthyr Tydfil is an obvious example in Wales. Last time I looked, the constituency of Witney had three economically inactive people searching for each job, while in the Rhondda that number was 154. That is a gross variation, and is not something to be disregarded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Lady knows, the coalition agreement referred to the possibility of raising the state pension age for men from 2016 and for women from 2020. Obviously, what we have done since that coalition agreement was produced is sought expert legal advice. We were advised that delaying the equalisation between men and women would have been illegal under European law. That comes to the heart of one of the questions that has rightly been asked, which is, why do the changes affect women more than men? The reason is that they are two separate changes brought together.

The first is the more rapid equalisation, and the second is the equal treatment of men and women from 65 to 66. The equal treatment of men and women from 65 to 66, not surprisingly, affects men and women equally, so the thing that affects women more is equalisation. That is what the Pensions Act 1995 does. It leaves men’s pension age at 65 and equalises women’s pension age, raising it from 60 to 65. Lo and behold, that Bill affected only women, because equalising the pension age so that women get the pension at the same age as men rather than earlier affects women. Not surprisingly, a change that was happening in any case, which we have speeded up and which affects only women, added to a change that affects men and women equally, produces the expected result.

[Hywel Williams]

The Minister is making a reasonable case, as ever. I am rather more interested in his justification for the acceleration of the change. I hope that he will come to that shortly.

[Steve Webb]

Let me address that directly. What is striking as soon as one looks at the evidence on longevity is just how far behind the curve we are. When the male state pension age was set at 65, it was not so much a case of Lord Hutton writing reports on pensions as a case of Len Hutton striding out at the Oval. That was the era that we were talking about. In that almost 100 years, there have been incredible increases in life expectancy, yet the male state pension age will still be 65 for another seven years. That shows how far behind the curve we are.

The views of Lord Turner were cited by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and by others, with some suggestion that we are breaching the Turner consensus. However, Lord Turner has breached the Turner consensus, if I may say so. He said in a news interview a couple of years ago, and the world has moved on even since then:

“If I was redoing my report I would be more radical, arguing for an even faster increase in the state pension age.”

That is exactly what we are doing, in line with the Turner consensus.

Pensions Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Hon. Members will have noted that in his very brief speech the Pensions Minister did not mention my new clause 8. Debate on the first group of amendments is due to end at 7.45 pm. As a consequence, we will regrettably have only one hour and 15 minutes allocated to three further matters, including six Government new clauses and three Opposition amendments on automatic enrolment, and five Government new clauses and one Government amendment on money purchase benefits, before we reach my new clause. I do not know whether we will reach new clause 8, but I am, perhaps uncharacteristically, pessimistic. If we do not do so, the issue will, under the current proposals, come back to haunt us as we see the full cumulative effect of the change from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index basis.

I do not wish to open debate on my new clause now, but I want to put it on record, as I said on Second Reading, that the CPI has more often been lower than the RPI. The figures announced today show a small difference between the two measures, with RPI at 5.6% and CPI at 5.2%. That, of course, is no guarantee for the future. I will not detain the House further on this matter now, as I hope to able to speak to new clause 8. I just wanted to make those points at this juncture.

Question put and agreed to.