Older Persons: Provision of Public Services

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)]

My Lords, in the last 12 months, I have spent rather more time watching television than has been my usual habit. I very quickly began to lose the will to live with the extensive coverage of Brexit, so I took refuge in some of the Freeview channels. They will not necessarily win a Palme d’Or for their westerns or adventure films, which relive the days of my youth in the 1950s. The fact is that throughout all these programmes of the non-BBC kind on Freeview there were interminable adverts for funeral plans, so these stations are obviously watched by the elderly. To take up the point that my noble friend Lord Maxton was developing, perhaps we ought to look at whether it could be arranged so that some of the Freeview channels make their contribution to the funding of the licence.

Looking at the intergenerational fairness report, there is an assumption that if the benefits given to the elderly are preserved and the benefits to the young are undermined by austerity-driven meanness, then the answer is to extend that meanness to the elderly. This is a fundamental flaw in the argument advanced by a group of people who I would not normally have credited with this degree of stupidity.

I want to finish on this point, as I know that we do not have a lot of time. Several benefits such as the winter fuel payment, the free bus pass and the television licence are seen as benefits which the elderly get at the expense of the rest of us. I was an MP from 1979, throughout the Thatcher years. One thing which struck me at that time was the concept of genteel poverty, when there were people who were frightened to claim the benefits. Nowadays there are people who take advantage of the bus pass and winter fuel allowance, as it helps to pay for the Christmas presents for their family. These people do not always have the money to subsidise their heating costs but this gives them that bit of independence and enhances their integrity. Very often, it compensates for their loneliness.

This is a mean-minded, dispiriting measure for which the Government, either by design or intent, have correctly ended up getting the blame. They have within their capability the means of finding solutions. The solutions should come early because, if they do not come soon, the general election which will follow will see them being punished. If there is one thing that the elderly will not do, it is to forget who is responsible for their increasing misery.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I start, with slightly less time than I should have, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for calling this debate and all the contributions. I cannot say that it has been an altogether comfortable way to spend the past two hours.

The Government are committed to ensuring economic security for people at every stage of their life, including when they reach retirement, so I am pleased to say that relative poverty rates have halved since 1990. I am glad that incomes for over-75 households have increased much faster than average. The average income for all households between 1999-2000 and 2016-17 improved by 71%, but for households containing someone 75 or over, average weekly incomes more than doubled. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned some other statistics which I do not have in front of me, but I will get back to him on that and his other 15 questions later, and copy the answer to all noble Lords.

We want to maintain the achievement of raising average income for the elderly. We forecast to spend more than £120 billion on benefits for pensioners in 2019-20 and are committed to the triple lock for the duration of this Parliament, guaranteeing that both the basic and the new state pension, excluding protected payments, will rise by the highest of average earnings growth, price inflation or 2.5%.

The Government recognise loneliness as one of our biggest public health challenges. It is estimated that between 5% and 18% of all UK adults are always or often lonely. Frequently, feeling lonely is linked to early death. It is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, depression and Alzheimer’s. We know that loneliness can affect people of all ages. As Jo Cox said, young or old, loneliness does not discriminate. We are working to help people of all ages to have meaningful social relationships and to avoid loneliness. We are the first Government in the world to appoint a Minister to lead work on tackling loneliness; I appreciate the comments of several noble Lords who acknowledged that.

Last year, we published the world’s first government strategy on loneliness, as well as securing £20 million of new grant funding for projects run by charities and community groups to bring people together. As the Motion suggests, the causes of loneliness and its solutions are many and varied. I much appreciated the ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, on that with respect to the elderly. I agree with him and other noble Lords that a debate on the wider aspects of this problem would be useful.

The loneliness strategy contains more than 60 policy commitments covering many aspects of people’s lives, from transport and health to education. For example, the Government are improving and expanding social prescribing across England. That will change the way in which patients experiencing loneliness are treated, connecting them to community groups and services through the support of link workers; 1,000 new, trained social prescribing link workers will be in place by 2020 and 900,000 will be referred to social prescribing by 2023-24. The strategy also announced the creation of a network of employers to take action on loneliness. More than 30 leading organisations, including Sainsbury’s, the Co-op, Transport for London and the British Red Cross, have signed up to this network, pledging to support their employees to avoid loneliness. We are also embedding loneliness into relationship education classes so that children can learn about it and the value of social relationships.

We agree that transport is vital to building and maintaining people’s social connections; it is therefore integral to the Government’s loneliness strategy. We have invested significantly in transport infrastructure, providing more than £61 billion in the five years up to 2020. That underpins much of what the Government can do to help people remain connected. We are also providing support to local bus services, community transport and community rail services.

For some people, a free local bus service can be a lifeline, providing access to healthcare and other essential services as well as allowing them to visit family and friends. To support this lifeline, the Government support council spending of around £1 billion a year so that older and disabled people can travel on buses for free. The Government remain committed to preserving the current statutory entitlement to concessionary bus fares. Therefore, last April, we announced a change in legislation to protect the concessionary travel scheme in its current form. However, we must recognise that providing free transport alone will not solve the problem of loneliness. Inclusive transport is key to our approach to the current transport network.

[Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan]

Can the Minister tell us why we should believe what he says about buses when the Government betrayed the trust they sought from the British electorate at the last election? They clearly broke their manifesto pledge there, so why should this promise be worth any more than the previous one?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

If the noble Lord is referring to TV licences, I will come on to them later. I hope that I will answer his question then. Of course, the fundamental difference there is that the power to do that was with the Government, not another organisation.

As I said, inclusive transport is part of our inclusive transport strategy, which was published last July, and our future of urban mobility strategy, which was published in March.

Turning to TV licences, I acknowledge and recognise the important role of the BBC in our national conversation and as a constant companion for everyone across the country, especially older people. From impartial news and current affairs coverage to its wide-ranging radio content, it provides something for everyone every day. We know the importance of providing such services, which is why we guaranteed the over-75 licence fee concession until June 2020. We know that television, radio and online services are powerful tools in combating loneliness and isolation.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, asked whether the scheme will continue in its present form. In the consultation, the public said that they want that; however, I accept that many changes in the competition and the provision of these services are coming. At the moment, the current charter arrangements say that the current licence will continue in its present form for the 11-year period. I do not know what exactly was said five or six Secretaries of State ago when this was agreed, but I know what was agreed and I will come on to that.

I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that when we agreed the five-year licence fee funded settlement with the BBC in 2015, the corporation was well funded to provide vital public services. We phased in the cost by providing £468 million in 2018-19 and £247 million in 2019-20, as agreed with the BBC. That is why, as I have said before in the House, the director-general said that the overall deal provided “financial stability”, in his words, and that the Government’s decision to put the cost of the over-75s on to the BBC had been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC. It was an agreement.

The licence fee income underpins the BBC’s important role in making sure that everyone can access the content that educates, informs and entertains. I noted earlier this week in the House that the Government did commit to maintaining the current licence fee—I mentioned that to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. As part of that deal we unfroze the licence fee for the first time since 2010 by guaranteeing that it will rise each year in line with inflation. The BBC received over £3.8 billion in licence fee income, more than ever before. In return, we agreed that responsibility for the over-75 licence fee concession would transfer to the BBC in June 2020. Parliament consented to that and delivered it as part of the Digital Economy Act 2017. That is why we are disappointed that the BBC will not protect free television licences for all viewers aged 75 and over. Of the number of proposals on the table, the BBC has taken the most narrowly defined reform option.

Let me address directly the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes: why did we promise free licences for the duration of this Parliament when we cannot guarantee that the BBC will keep them free from 2020? That is because, as I have said, we agreed with the BBC at the 2015 funding settlement that responsibility for the concession will transfer to the BBC in 2020. That future concession was therefore a decision for the BBC. That was agreed by Parliament in the Digital Economy Act. The Secretary of State has said repeatedly that he expected the BBC to honour that agreement, and that is why we are disappointed. The BBC has acknowledged that the most vulnerable--the poorest pensioners who receive pension credit--will get the over-75 concession. Of course, as many noble Lords have said, there is a possibility that with the help of the BBC in making this available, an extra 600,000 people could receive pension credit because although they are eligible for it, they do not claim it. That would be a good thing and that is what the Government would like to see happen.