Social Security

Debate between Meg Hillier and Paul Holmes

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Let me continue for a moment. There are budget challenges this year, and many decisions that were made in recent Budgets will hit the public finances in 2025, 2026 or beyond, because there was either huge optimism about the state of economic growth or a deferral of painful cuts. Different Members of the House will have their own views.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on the post to which she has been elected. She has just outlined a number of projects for which public money needs to be found. As the shadow Secretary of State outlined, the Government’s decision today will save £1.1 billion, and the replacements they are putting in place will cost £3 billion. How does that make economic sense, and how does it help the case that she is making?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I give credit to the hon. Gentleman for his chutzpah in coming to the House today to say that it is this Government who have denuded pensioners of income. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) highlighted, the previous Government have a track record in that area, and there are 880,000 pensioners who, on the hon. Gentleman’s watch, deserved pension credit but did not get it. Those pensioners have lost out on £3,900 a year, in some cases for many years, because the last Government fell down on the job. They protected some pensioners, but not all. Where was the urgency then? These are crocodile tears when those people were suffering, but it is right that pensioners should get what they are entitled to, and pension credit is not being abolished by this Government. Rather, it is being promoted to make sure that the very poorest pensioners get that income.

One of the things that is absolutely apparent is that we cannot take this issue in isolation. We have a Budget coming on 30 October, and knowing what I knew a few months ago as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and what I know today, I am not going to change my tune about the dire state of public finances. However, we face a second challenge: at the same time that our public finances are in that dire state, many of our citizens face the same challenges in their personal finances. This Labour Government are rightly committed to growth, but that will require an approach to taxation that helps ensure growth. We will therefore hear many arguments about the need for a taxation system that will underpin growth.