Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Watts and Steve Webb

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Following last week’s Budget, will the Minister assure me that if people exhaust their pension pots they will still be entitled to the full range of pensioner income-related benefits?

[Steve Webb]

Unlike the Labour party, we actually trust people with their own money. The people we are talking about have saved frugally for their retirement; they are not the sort of people to blow the lot. We will, of course, look at all the rules on capital in our Department and in the Department of Health in the light of the announcement to ensure that they are up to date, but I think the hon. Gentleman’s view that older people will blow the lot is far from the truth.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Watts and Steve Webb

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

My hon. Friend is right that at the moment there is a concern that if people save small amounts of money, all they do is deprive themselves of means-tested benefits. That is why our state pension reform is absolutely essential to ensure that when people do save they are better off as a result, and we look forward to that being a firm foundation for auto-enrolment when it starts later this year.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

T4. Is not the problem with the Government’s benefit to work programme the fact that due to economic policies and failures there are no jobs for people to go to? For every five vacancies, there are so many people chasing them that there is no chance of them getting work. When will the Government do something about growth so that people can get back into jobs?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Watts and Steve Webb

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

T3. What advice can the Minister give the 3,259 people in St Helens who have been told to downsize their home, despite the fact that on existing turnover it will take five and a half years for them to do so while, in the meantime, losing their benefit? What advice would he give those constituents?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to social housing over-occupation. If people are in a particularly difficult situation, local authorities have been given an enhanced amount of discretionary housing payment to help them make that transition. It is vital that we tackle 1 million empty bedrooms in social housing.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Watts and Steve Webb

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As there were 25 contributions to the debate, I want to try to respond to some of the points that were made, and then I will certainly give way some more.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans)—indeed, Cardiff was well represented in the debate: by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) and by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), who raised issues relating to Allied Steel and Wire—pointed out Labour’s track record on pensions. He was right to do so, because although one or two Opposition Members glossed over history, he reminded us of the 75p pension increase—something that can never happen again under our triple lock. He reminded us of the failure of the previous Government to get to grips with Equitable Life and of the tax grab by the previous Chancellor and Prime Minister on company pensions. That is not a proud record.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, made a characteristically thoughtful contribution and I am grateful for her support for our abolition of the default retirement age. The link to that issue has not often been made in today’s debate. The previous Government were planning to raise the state pension age to 66, 67 or 68—but to leave it legal to sack people for turning 65. There is a logical flaw there, and I am sure the House is ahead of me on that. It is therefore right that we have taken away employers’ ability to sack people for the “sin” of turning 65.

I am also grateful for the hon. Lady’s support for our going ahead with the National Employment Savings Trust and the flexibility around auto-enrolment in 2012. She asked whether our £10 billion estimate of the cost of delay to 2020 was a gross or net figure. It is a net figure, taking account of benefit offsets. However, a lot of the points that she and a number of other Members made would apply whenever we raised state pension ages. For example, it was the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), I think, who asked, “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.