Winter Fuel Payment

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

The right hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear me say that the Chancellor will take all decisions in the Budget. However, he might like to reflect on the record of his party in office on encouraging take-up of pension credit. We have been painfully aware since taking office how little the Conservatives did to increase take-up of pension credit during their 14 years in office. That is why it is so urgent for us to make progress in getting those eligible to sign up for pension credit. By doing so, they will get pension credit, which they may have been missing out on for years under the Conservatives, and they will continue to receive the winter fuel payment.

Pensioners may well be angry at the Conservatives for how little they did to get people to sign up for pension credit while they were in office. Pensioners may well be angry at the Conservatives for leaving the country with a legacy of a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.

We on the Government Benches are committed to protecting the triple lock. That will mean that pensioners on the full new state pension, who have received an extra £900 this year, will, pending the uprating review by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions this autumn, receive a boost that could be worth well more than £400, so by the end of this Parliament they could be receiving around £1,700 more than they do today.

Conservative Members are keen to play politics with the tough decisions that this Government are taking. They are desperate to take attention away from the fact that, as people across this country know, it is the Conservatives who are to blame for the economic mess we have gained. They created a mess and now they want to criticise us for cleaning it up. If they had governed more responsibly, they might not have been sitting on the Opposition Benches, in opposition to a Government who are fixing the foundations they left to rot.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the only shameful thing in this debate is the legacy that the Government were left? It forced the new Government—[Interruption.] The reality that 800,000 pensioners are not receiving pension credit is a shameful legacy. If Conservative Members wanted to show humility and learn from their party’s record in government, they would acknowledge that they are the ones who crashed the economy, left the NHS in a way that pensioners cannot get to see a doctor, and broke NHS dentistry. Does the Minister agree that it is our job to fix the economy so that we can keep on helping pensioners?

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Frankly, it is time for Conservative Members to recognise and accept what they have done to this country, and to show some contrition and accept responsibility. However, no matter what the Conservatives choose to do, we are getting on with the tough decisions that are necessary in government. By changing the winter fuel payment and making it means-tested, we are beginning to take the necessary steps to address the black hole they created, while protecting the most vulnerable in society.

The Prime Minister has said that we must be prepared to be unpopular if we are to govern responsibly, which means facing up to tough challenges and tackling them head-on. The motion laid by the Opposition sets out several “regrets”, but they have never once shown regret for all the reckless decisions they took and the damage they did to our public services, public finances and economy. Our task now in government is to fix the mess they made and to give our country the chance of the better future we deserve.

Budget Responsibility Bill

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to make my maiden speech while you are in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to follow such wonderful maiden speeches, particularly that of the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller); I pay tribute to her and to her mother. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and Leigh (David Burton-Sampson), the first ever Labour Member for his constituency. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) for bowing out of the competition with Peterborough over which constituency is the most beautiful.

I can think of no more important debate in which to make my maiden speech than one about securing our economic stability for my city and this country to flourish. As the gateway to the fens, the home of food and farming, Peterborough is willing to play its part in rebuilding our country. I am the fifth MP for Peterborough in seven years—we had three in 2019 alone—so I hope to bring to my tenure as a local MP the much-heralded stability that my party’s Front Benchers talk about.

I pay tribute to my predecessors, who all cared deeply about our city and worked hard to be a voice for our needs on the national stage. It turns out that I have some illustrious predecessors. I feel I may be letting my constituents down: it is fitting, during the Olympics, to pay tribute to David Cecil, who entered Parliament having already won a gold medal at the 1928 Olympics. I look forward to talking about my egg-and-spoon race at school. I would also like to thank my immediate predecessor Paul Bristow and his staff for their incredible hard work looking after residents in need in our city.

I am proud to be part of the largest intake of Co-operative MPs in Parliament’s history. Co-operative and community values run deep in Peterborough. I am the second Labour and Co-operative MP to serve our city; the first was Stanley Tiffany, who was elected in another significant change election in 1945. I note that Tiffany’s first question in the House, in August 1945, was to the then Minister of Health, Nye Bevan, on affordable and rural housing. The answer was that housing was a priority for the incoming Labour Government of 1945. Almost 80 years later, that challenge remains. I am pleased to see that affordable housing will be one of the priorities of the Labour Government coming into power in 2024.

Tiffany’s roots were in the Peterborough and District Co-operative Society. I am incredibly proud to have been elected alongside Labour colleagues on a pledge to double the size of the co-operative economy—a pledge that Tiffany could be proud of. Just a few weeks ago, I met staff at the Co-op store in Eye in Peterborough to hear about the rise in shoplifting and the abuse that too many of them face. Abuse should never be part of the job. I put on record my thanks to the retail workers in Peterborough and around the country who serve us every day. I pledge to work tirelessly with my good friends in the co-operative movement, the trade unions and this House to give retail workers the dignity and protection at work that they need.

We are also home to the wonderful English Mustard Growers co-operative, which was formed in 2009 to keep mustard production alive in the UK after the disastrous harvest of 2007. Many people here will know our crop as Colman’s mustard. Today, there are over 40 growing members, including our very own Michael Sly, who is based at Park Farm in Thorney. In Peterborough, we really do cut the mustard.

Peterborough has welcomed people from across the country and the world for generations as a city, and even more so when we became a new town. I am one of those people who have chosen to make Peterborough my home. The new town promise of a decent home, a good job and a great place to live remains as important today as ever, but it is a promise that has frayed over the past 14 years.

Peterborough is a working city with a rich history; we work hard, care for our community and love our country. We are deeply rooted in an industrial heritage of food, farming and engineering. We are home to a breathtaking cathedral, majestic mosques, and urban landscapes surrounded by the fens and poet John Clare’s country. We exemplify Clare’s words:

“I found the poems in the fields and only wrote them down”.

We are at the heart of sugar beet country and the home of British Sugar. We show how urban and rural can live successfully side by side. We have a rich history and a bright future for food and farming, and I thank the farming community and my good friends in the National Farmers Union for their advice and friendship. In my time in this House, I will always be a champion for food security and for growing more food in this country.

We draw on our engineering heritage of Perkins Engines, Caterpillar and Peter Brotherhood, and can use that heritage to create new, high-skilled jobs and apprenticeships for the future. We are home to a new and growing university campus in the form of Anglia Ruskin University Peterborough, and to a new centre for green technology at Peterborough college, working to transition blue-collar opportunities to green-collar ones in hydrogen, electric vehicles and sustainable construction. We are also home to a rich diversity of communities, languages and traditions, from the Italians who arrived after the second world war to eastern Europeans and a large Kashmiri and Pakistani community. Visiting Azad Kashmir last year with friends from Peterborough remains a highlight of my life. The beauty of that land and of its people impress upon me the need to speak up on Kashmir in this House.

However, we also face challenges. Nearly half the children in my constituency are growing up in poverty, and in some areas, that figure is even higher. For working-class parents such as mine, the promise was that by working hard, their children could get on. The greatest nobility I have known is working-class pride: the pride in good work, seeing your children succeed, and the ability to get on in life. That social contract has been broken, and we are all the poorer for it. I put on record my love and gratitude to my parents for instilling that pride in me and for pushing me to do more. I believe they are watching me on telly today, unless I am up against Tom Daley in the diving.

I also thank the trade union movement I have grown up in and been part of for my whole life for giving me the skills, opportunities and confidence to stand for election, and now to stand in this House making this speech. Over the past few years, I have had the immense privilege to serve as deputy general secretary of Prospect and Bectu, and to serve internationally as one of the trade union delegates to the OECD’s AI expert panel, adding my voice on international issues. The trade union movement makes Britain a better place: every day, the contributions of thousands of workplace volunteers keep people safe at work, help people get on at work, and add to our economic wealth. I am proud to be union made.

I will finish with this point: one of the things that drove me to stand for election this time was the sad passing of my brother in 2016. Richard’s sudden passing from an accident followed by sepsis was tragic, but it also brought home to me that my family were only able to get through it with the help and care of NHS staff, who looked after my brother and my family. Sepsis is something this House has learned more about recently due to the bravery of the former Member for South Thanet, who I pay tribute to. The NHS and our public servants are the best of us, and I give this commitment in the House today: that I will use whatever time I have in this place to champion the NHS, but also to champion awareness of the dangers and terrors of sepsis and what it does to people and their families.

Peterborough stands ready to play our part in rebuilding our country. We have drive, dedication and purpose, and with a Government on our side, we look forward to driving opportunities in Peterborough and around the country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)]

I look forward to seeing the hon. Gentleman’s campaigns on behalf of his brother Richard. We now have another maiden speech, from Joshua Reynolds.