State Pension Reform

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady both for her Committee’s report calling for the state pension to be sorted out and for her willingness to undertake the scrutiny. We will work closely with, and support, her Committee in doing that. She is absolutely right: transition is the messy bit. With pension reform, it would be lovely to start with no history and a blank sheet of paper, but we cannot do that. The straight answer to her question, however, is that transition is particularly important for those closest to pension age, who will have a complex history and rights built up. For younger workers, it is straightforward: they will do the 35 years and get the £144. Transition is complicated and messy in the early years, but it quickly works its way through the system, and we have worked hard on the statements we will send to people. They will be clear and say, as it were, “Under the bonnet, the workings might be complicated, but you’ve got this so far. Do this many years, and you’ll get £144.”

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the current pensions system is not working and does not guarantee pensioners the financial security to which they are entitled? Will he confirm that the triple lock guarantee will still apply to the new single-tier pension, thus avoiding the 75p increase fiasco we saw under the last Labour Government?

[Steve Webb]

The current position is that we are obliged by law to uprate by at least earnings, and our policy is to go further and have the triple lock, as is mirrored in the White Paper. The legal position in the draft Bill will be at least for earnings uprating, but all our illustrative estimates in the White Paper are indeed based on the triple lock.