Oral Answers to Questions

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

In fact, we made sure that the supplementary charge began to be reduced in the autumn statement in December, so the hon. Gentleman should catch up on his facts. The fact remains that the measures we are taking to support the industry—through the Wood review, the establishment of the Oil and Gas Authority, and decommissioning deeds and field allowances —have already created an environment that has seen very substantial investment in the North sea in the past few years. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) made is right. Making sure that we have a climate for long-term investment is precisely what we are trying to do, and the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the Budget for our decisions.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

What are the Government doing to encourage the offshore sector to co-operate and to have common standards as a better way of reducing costs in the supply chain than laying off the very people we will need when, I hope, things in the North sea begin to pick up again?

[Danny Alexander]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about co-operation in the industry. It is precisely such co-operation that has led the Wood review to recommend and the Government to create the Oil and Gas Authority. We find that particularly in respect of the sensible and low-cost use of infrastructure in the North sea, where greater co-operation between fields and so on will help to reduce costs. That is one of the early challenges that Andy Samuel is getting to grips with at the Oil and Gas Authority, and I think he has the support of the whole House in doing so.

Equitable Life

Anne Begg Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The key point is that the Equitable Life policy holders have been through the courts and through the parliamentary ombudsman, and the matter has been found in their favour. Maladministration clearly took place and a key decision was taken to put those policy holders back into the position that they would have been in had that maladministration not taken place. Clearly, other pension schemes are in trouble. There are a lot of pension schemes in trouble because the previous Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, raided private pension funds and thought that that was a golden opportunity. We must take that into account. That is not the case with Equitable Life policy holders, which makes this a different matter. We have to be careful about broadening out this subject to other pension schemes.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that expectations have been raised and promises have been made? All that these people did was to invest in what they thought was a trusted company. They have done nothing wrong and they cannot for the life of them understand why it is taking so long to settle the matter.

[Bob Blackman]

These people have battled and struggled through the courts and through a long process to get justice. There are many of us, certainly on the Government Benches but also on the Opposition Benches, who say that all these people did was invest for the future and trust what they were told. They took a risk to a certain extent that the market would be appropriate, but they did not expect the level of maladministration that took place or the way in which they would be treated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course, our challenge is to eliminate the deficit and to get our debt falling. Sovereign wealth funds are built up by countries that run consistent budget surpluses, which is exactly what we need to do in the United Kingdom. In particular, I would like to see some of the revenues from the shale gas industry used to support local communities. That would be a boost to communities across the country, especially in the north of England.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Although the Government cannot control the world oil price, they can do things such as drive down the costs in the industry. If the oil price remains low and perhaps drops further to the level where it costs more to take the oil out of the North sea, that is bad not just for the economy of Aberdeen and north-east Scotland, but for the economy of the UK.

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with the hon. Lady and I know that she is deeply involved in these issues as the Member of Parliament for Aberdeen South and chairs the all-party committee on these issues. We have to work out how we protect the industry as best we can from a rapid fall in the world oil price, and we must make sure that the brilliant skills, jobs and investment in north-east Scotland continue. That is why we anticipated the challenge by launching the consultation in the autumn statement and making immediate cuts to the tax regime. We have to take further steps over the coming year because we are determined that this brilliant industry will have a brilliant future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When it comes to tackling the country’s economic problems, we can improve living standards only by getting more people back into work. This Government have been reducing child poverty and ensuring that work pays.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Tax credits are meant to be moving into universal credit. What timetable is the Treasury working to for phasing out tax credits?

[Priti Patel]

That matter will be subject to the next Parliament.

Taxation of Pensions Bill

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We made it clear, in the documentation that was published at the time of the March Budget, that the legal status of the support we have provided is “guidance”. That means that there is not a recommendation of a specific product; none the less, that support will be hugely helpful for those who will face choices. It is right that the role that we play—or facilitate—is about providing support in the form of guidance, rather than making recommendations of particular products.

I would like to provide Members with an overview of the different parts of the Bill. At Budget 2014, the Chancellor announced that everyone with a defined contribution pension could take it as they wished from age 55, and would no longer be subject to drawdown limits or income tests before being able to take their money flexibly. The current system denies people flexibility at the point of taking their pension. For those with the smallest and largest pension savings, there is the option to take their pension as cash, but for everyone else there are considerable restrictions. They have two main options: purchase an annuity or enter capped drawdown. Capped drawdown limits how much someone can take out each year to an amount calculated by reference to the amount they might have received from an annuity purchased with their fund.

Flexible drawdown already lets those with very high levels of savings to take their money however they want, taxed at their marginal rate, if they can prove that they have a guaranteed pension income for the rest of their life of at least £12,000. The Government have already reduced that from £20,000 to give many more people flexibility, but the first main change provided for in the Bill goes much further, making unlimited drawdown available to anyone with a defined-contribution pension and removing the limits on what can be withdrawn from those funds.

The Bill also ensures that existing drawdown funds can, if the individual wants, be converted to flexi-access drawdown, so that those currently in capped drawdown will be able to benefit too. The aim of the changes is to give all the 320,000 people who retire every year with defined contribution savings greater choice about how to access those savings, regardless of how big their pension pot is. The changes will take effect from 6 April 2015.

Some people think that this change—allowing everyone access to their own hard-earned money—will cause people to spend recklessly what they made sacrifices to save. The Government do not agree. Those who have saved the money over a lifetime should be trusted to make their own decisions about how best to use it to provide themselves with an income in retirement. Through the guidance guarantee, we are making sure that customers have access to impartial guidance on how to make the most of their money.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gauke]

I am happy to give way to the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.

[Dame Anne Begg]

We agree that it is important that people can access their money and use it how they best see fit, but might not the introduction of these flexibilities lead to there being so many products on offer that some unscrupulous people might offer individuals unsuitable products? What will the Government do to ensure that people are not mis-sold products that are not suitable for them or, indeed, that err on the side of illegality?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. First, the guidance guarantee will ensure that guidance is available to people on what their options might be, to point them in the right direction. Secondly, we recognise that the regulators have an important role to play. The Financial Conduct Authority is very engaged in this matter, setting standards and ensuring proper enforcement. She is right that we must deal seriously with any unscrupulous businesses out there that seek to exploit people, but we have a regulatory regime in place to address that very point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

The FCA will certainly treat this extremely seriously. I entirely share the hon. Lady’s view that this is an important matter and that it is right to take the strongest action to ensure that those who attempt to defraud our constituents of their life savings face severe sanctions. This Bill is about the tax changes; the Pension Schemes Bill deals with the wider issues, and it gives the FCA powers to set standards for the guidance guarantee. Regulated firms have responsibilities to treat their customers fairly, and the FCA has made it clear that it expects firms to comply with that, in this context as in others.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Even the Association of British Insurers says that there should be more regulation around this issue. Is the Minister listening closely to what the ABI is saying?

[Mr Gauke]

We of course engage closely with the ABI and other bodies involved in this area. Indeed, the work in this Bill and in the Pension Schemes Bill is a result of close engagement with the ABI. The Government are determined to ensure that we have a regulatory system that protects our constituents from the unscrupulous. This is principally an issue for the FCA, but we are determined to ensure that it has the powers that it needs. Much in the Pension Schemes Bill relates to that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cathy Jamieson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point which I will deal with in some detail. It is one of the most crucial issues not just in respect of the Bill, but of the wider pensions landscape.

[Dame Anne Begg]

There is confusion as to what the proposals will mean in practice because there has not been the discussion across the political spectrum and among social partners that took place for the accumulation stage—making sure that more people save for their retirement. There has been little if any discussion about the decumulation stage, beyond criticising annuities. That is part of the problem with this process: the Government pulled a rabbit out of a hat at the Budget, without building a broad consensus to ensure that everybody is on board.

[Cathy Jamieson]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point which I will address in due course. Before I do so, I want to put on the record one of the concerns expressed by the TUC, which, in keeping with the point made by my hon. Friend, said that it believes that

“the measures contained in the Bill are being rushed in, thus overturning the emphasis on consensus and consultation that has been a positive feature of pensions policy making over the last decade.”

Finance Bill

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I agree that we should not put all the eggs in one basket, but we certainly should not put none in the internet basket. It is a very useful provision and, as public and domestic access to broadband improves throughout the islands, I think that use of the internet will speed things up.

I find it odd that so much of our discussion about this Finance Bill, which is a Treasury matter, has been about pensions Bills. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun has prayed in aid the Pensions Minister’s submission to the Department for Work and Pensions. I wonder whether we conduct our debates on Finance Bills in the right way, structurally speaking, and whether other departmental Ministers should be involved, where relevant, alongside Treasury Ministers. Fundamentally, the report supported by Opposition Members almost amounts to a fundamental review of a number of issues in the pensions industry, which is clearly in the remit of the DWP, not the Treasury. I am not arguing that it is wrong or right; it is just that not all the key players are involved.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the fact that these pensions provisions are being handled by the Treasury. Does he agree that the two pensions Bills announced in the Queen’s speech appear to pull in different directions? One is about giving people more control over their money, while the other is about collective direct contribution schemes, which are the opposite of that. That could lead to a conflict, because two Departments are involved in developing the policy.

[James Duddridge]

I do not believe they are contradictory, because some people want to hand over that level of responsibility.

I know that other Members want to speak. I wanted to make a number of other points, but I will sit down and leave it at that in order to give the Minister a chance to respond.

Fairness and Inequality

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

The big increase in income inequality was clearly between 1979 and 1997. Any graph will make that quite clear.

There is a danger in perpetuating the myth mentioned by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). I apologise to the House for missing some speeches, including the one by the Member who represents the Western Isles—I am sorry, but as a lowland Scot I genuinely find it difficult to pronounce the name of his constituency in Gaelic so I shall just call it the Western Isles. I missed his virtuoso performance because I was sitting on a Public Bill Committee, not because I did not want to hear what he had to say.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr said that there was no difference between a Labour Government and the current Government. As I have said in some of my interventions, that is not correct. It is dangerous to say so, too, because it makes a lot of people think that there is no point in voting or trying to change things because Governments do not make any difference and because there is no difference between the parties.

For example, the reduction in pensioner poverty during the years of Labour government should not be forgotten. Many pensioners will not forget that. A lot of what that Government did created the base on which this Government propose to build with the single-tier pension. As I have said before, it was not the triple lock that produced the highest cash payment to pensioners but inflation—an inflationary rise made necessary by the Government’s own—[Interruption.] I apologise to the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which I am a member, for not seeing her try to intervene.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the great achievements of the previous Labour Government on pensioner income, in particular, was the introduction of pension credit, which took every single pensioner out of absolute poverty? Not one was left in absolute poverty at the end of that Labour Government.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I entirely agree. That was a hugely important step forward, but we also addressed the issue of getting people back to work. One myth is that we are not at all interested in getting people back to work, but the tax credit system did a lot to help people to get into work, particularly single parents—350,000 of them were helped into work as a result of that policy—and that is important.

I accept that employment for those who are fit and able to work is an important prerequisite of increasing their income—remaining on benefits is not the way to increase one’s income and has not been under any Government—but that is not always sufficient as a marker that people can become better off. It is a necessary beginning, but it has not been sufficient and we must consider the hours of work that people are doing and the low wages that many receive. If we do not tackle that, people in work will still be very poor, as they are now. That is why the child poverty measures show that 60% of those in child poverty have members of their families in work.

We should look at what is happening in places such as Scotland, instead of assuming that these problems have been magically addressed, because there are still problems, some of which, in relation to social care, I alluded to earlier. I am not saying that free social care should not be looked at—it was introduced not by the current Scottish Government, but by the previous Administration—but it does present severe challenges, and if we do not discuss those honestly, we will confuse people about what we can achieve, and then no wonder they become cynical. Those in Scotland struggling with poor quality care know that. In addition, there are issues in Scotland in the education field. Universities give free tuition, but as a result the colleges, which are hugely important for social mobility—they give people a second chance in education—have been starved of finance. That is important.

To sum up, we have to be somewhere in the middle and make real changes in people’s lives, not pontificate about what might be possible in some wonderful place where the sun always shines and no one is ever poor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pamela Nash]

It will not come as a surprise that while I agree with the majority of the motion, I am disappointed by its tone. It does not recognise what the Labour Government achieved on inequality between 1997 and 2010—in fact, it attacks that Government—so I will be abstaining, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to put on the record my reasons for doing so.

In my region of north Lanarkshire, the welfare reforms will take £55 million out of the economy every year, which affects not just individuals whose benefits are being cut, but local businesses in our town centres which are now struggling to cope with a vast reduction in customer numbers. That is damaging the development and visible progress of the last 20 years, during which time we have struggled to repair the damage done to our depleted heavy industry and manufacturing in the west of Scotland.

Partly owing to our industrial heritage, my constituency has relatively high levels of disability and chronic illness—as a result of old injuries from those days—and that has made my community particularly vulnerable to the welfare cuts. Many households have a member living with a disability or illness, as I see every day. I have been particularly perturbed by the scrapping of crisis loans, which is affecting the most vulnerable in our society, and although many of the changes have been mitigated by the Scottish welfare fund, many people are still being left in dire straits. Every day I see people whose benefits have been sanctioned and who are no longer entitled to a crisis loan.

[Dame Anne Begg]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will be as disappointed as I was to learn that, according to figures published today, the Scottish welfare fund has been underspent by a considerable amount. Obviously, those who are losing out are the most vulnerable families. It is a great shame that the SNP Government did not see their way to ensuring that the money was properly spent and properly allocated.

[Pamela Nash]

That does indeed upset me. When people come to me and tell me that their benefits have been subject to sanctions, it usually proves to have been due to an honest error; but are we really saying that, in this day and age, even those who have been sanctioned through their own fault should be starving? The only places that I can tell those people to turn to are my local food banks—and food banks throughout the country are confirming that benefit sanctions are one of the main reasons why people are going to them to obtain food just to survive.

I know that time is limited, so I shall try to keep the rest of my comments brief. The myriad statistics that have been shouted across the Chamber today, and all the political posturing, have sometimes made it difficult to bear in mind that individual people with whose cases we all deal as constituency Members are affected by the cuts that are taking place. An old classmate of mine from primary school came to see me a few weeks ago. He is a former serviceman, and when he came out of the Army he became a security guard, but he is now struggling to find employment. How can he be expected to find a job at a time when more than 2 million people are still unemployed, and at a time when many other servicemen and servicewomen will be joining him in the dole queue as further job cuts in the military are announced?

Most of the jobs that will be available to that ex-serviceman will be part-time jobs, or jobs involving zero-hours contracts. Moreover, he depends on housing benefit to keep a roof over his head, and he has been hit by the bedroom tax. His child’s bedroom has been deemed to be a spare room by the Department for Work and Pensions, because the child also has a bedroom in the mother’s house, so he has had to pay bedroom tax for a long time in order to ensure that he still has regular access to the child.

The Scottish Parliament recently passed a budget to fund complete mitigation of the bedroom tax. I welcome that measure, and I am glad that the Scottish Parliament eventually listened to the Scottish Affairs Committee—of which I am a member, although we are not allowed into the Parliament—but many people have already been affected by the tax, and I have to say that the “smoke and mirrors” approach taken by the SNP to one of the clearest examples of UK Government policy making the poor poorer has been nothing short of shameful. They have sat on their hands and done nothing when they could have taken action.

The UK Government made it very clear that the Scottish Government had the power to mitigate the bedroom tax long ago. The SNP said that there was no cash, and then found £20 million. It subsequently said that its hands were tied, but the Scottish Affairs Committee was told by the Scotland Office months ago that that was rubbish, and that the Scottish Government already had the power to mitigate the tax for all the people who were suffering in Scotland. I ask them now to think about the people who have suffered since the bedroom tax was introduced 10 months ago, and to consider apologising to those people and telling them how they will be recompensed.

As I have said, I regret the tone of the motion, which does not acknowledge the progress made under the Labour Government in alleviating the poverty of families both in and out of work. I hope that the Government will heed the many important points that have been raised by members of all parties today, and that they will establish a commission of inquiry to examine the impact of welfare reform—on the most vulnerable in particular—and to investigate inequality throughout the United Kingdom. I also hope, for my constituents’ sake, that the Scottish Government will immediately take advantage of every lever that their devolved powers have made available to them to protect the people of Scotland, and will not continue to pretend that they are powerless to tackle inequality without independence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whiteford]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point.

It is also important to note that those fiscal levers are not the only tools at the Government’s disposal for tackling inequality. Addressing the underlying drivers of wage inequality requires sustained effort and a fresh mindset about the policy choices that we can make to further a more equitable model of economic growth and to build a fairer, more inclusive and less divided society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) outlined some of the positive ways in which equitable growth could be pursued in Wales. He opened the debate by drawing our attention to the geographical distribution of inequality across the UK, and argued convincingly that while much of Government policy was oriented towards the needs of London and its surrounds, the consequences of that for the other nations and regions of the UK could be dire. Many of us have paid a heavy price for London’s prosperity.

It is notable that, with a few honourable exceptions, the speakers in today’s debate have come from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Perhaps that shows how seriously the issue of inequality—which is distinct from, but related to, poverty—is taken in these islands. It is obviously a pertinent issue in the context of Scotland’s referendum later this year, as we weigh up the two futures that are opening up before us and consider not only the benefits of making policy decisions based on our own values and aspirations but the uncertain consequences of continuing along the path that the UK seems determined to follow, with wealth and opportunity being increasingly concentrated among a small elite.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Obviously, if we are going to pursue a more equal society, we will have to ensure that those at the top do not get richer. What are the SNP’s policies for ensuring that those who are already rich become poorer in order to narrow the income gap?

[Dr Whiteford]

Had the hon. Lady been here for the earlier part of the debate, she would have heard some back-and-forth chat about tax rates and such like. I will not rehearse those arguments. For Labour, there still seems to be a zero sum game in which rich and poor have to share out a very small cake. The fundamental point that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr made earlier was that if we want to tackle inequality, we need to grow the economy. Once we have done that, we will be in a much better position to tackle inequality and poverty alike.

National Minimum Wage

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps the best way to make savings in the welfare bill would be to make sure that people are not just in work, but in well-paid work, so that they would not have to depend on welfare?

[Rachel Reeves]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. If more people were paid a living wage, if the minimum wage were enforced and if more people who want to work full time were doing so rather than working part time, all those things would help bring down the rising costs of social security.

A Britain where people who are putting in the effort and the hours still cannot make ends meet cannot be right and it is not fair. A Britain where parents who want to spend more time with their family and children but can hardly see them because they have to take on a second job is not right and it is not fair. A Britain where a young worker who wants to go to evening classes to improve their prospects but cannot because they have to take on an extra shift in the evening just to make ends meet is not right and it is not fair. A Britain where a woman cleaning the offices of well-paid executives before they arrive in the morning and who is still at work in the evening serving on the supermarket tills is not right and it is not fair.

This is not just an injustice to those families. It is, as my hon. Friend has said, imposing cost on the rest of us as well, because lower pay means more money spent on tax credits and housing benefit. The bills of in-work poverty are rising faster than this Government can cut people’s entitlements. It also means less tax and national insurance going into the Government’s coffers. If we want to get the costs of social security under control and if we want to put our public finances on a sustainable footing, we need to get our economy working for working people, so that we can all earn our way out of the cost of living crisis that this Government have created.

What solutions do Government Members have to offer? As my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) has indicated, the hon. Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), for Clacton (Mr Carswell) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) sponsored a Bill that would have enabled employees to agree with their employers that they should not be paid the minimum wage. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) has said that people working for businesses with three employees or fewer should not have to be paid the minimum wage. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) has said that 16 to 21-year-olds should not have to be paid a minimum wage. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has said that disabled workers should not have to be paid the minimum wage. Shame on them and shame on the Conservative party. It is the same old story from the same old nasty Tories. Their only answer to our economic problems is to cut taxes for the richest and cut pay for the poorest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not just jobs that are being created in Brighton; there has been an increase in the number of businesses being created, too. Employment allowance is coming in and people will see that as a real way of helping small businesses with the cost of labour. That should help them employ more people and help the people who are already employed. That is just one example of what we are doing to ensure that this is a balanced private sector recovery, and that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs expects businesses to provide real-time information, which a lot of small businesses find either very difficult or impossible to do. What help will be put in place to ensure that they are able to move on to the new system? Even if universal credit eventually comes into being, it will depend on that information.

[Mr Osborne]

Some 90% of businesses are on real-time information. Of course, the transition to any new system is a challenge, but the new system will be much easier for small businesses, and all businesses, to keep an accurate account of their tax payments, and that will help them. We have phased it in so that small businesses, in particular, have time to prepare. This is a real improvement on a tax system that was many decades old and had not kept up with modern technology.

amendment of the law

Anne Begg Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

This scheme will not be available for foreign buyers; this is a scheme to help people from this country. That situation did not happen overnight, and the hon. Gentleman’s own Government signally failed to do anything about it. It is perhaps apposite for me to raise the issues to do with social housing.

As well as rewarding those who want to get on, we are taking tough action to tackle those who want a free ride and who are abusing the housing system. We are announcing today new measures to stop rogue landlords cashing in from renting homes to illegal migrants and we are also ensuring fair play in the allocation of taxpayer-funded social housing. We are tackling the widespread perception that the way social housing is allocated is unfair and favours foreign migrants over local people and members of the armed services.

It is true that one in 10 of all the new social housing tenancies in England go to a foreign migrant whereas in London one in five social housing tenancies belong to a foreign migrant. That is not fair to people who have worked hard and paid their taxes in Britain, so new rules will ensure that councils give priority to local people and to the armed forces when allocating social housing. That tough action will tackle the pull factors that led to unsustainable immigration under Labour and it will help community cohesion by ensuring fair play and removing the perception of unfairness that extremists exploit.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is very keen that the work force should be mobile and able to move around the country to where there is work. However, would that not make the person moving into an area no longer a local, meaning that they would not qualify for social housing?

[Mr Pickles]

As the hon. Lady knows, under this Government and the previous Government a number of schemes have enabled tenants in social housing to swap between local authorities. Those schemes will continue to operate.

We are offering a simple and proportionate response to housing needs. As my second favourite member of the Labour party, Lord Mandelson, remarked last week:

“I can’t quite remember which member of the government it was who claimed to have abolished boom and bust. Well, we abolished boom”.

Last week, Labour was again playing the politics of envy and division, attacking the fact that we are helping hard-working families in middle England, in both the north and the south. Let me be clear for Labour’s benefit. We are not about to introduce 110% or even 100% mortgages for those who cannot afford to pay, but 95% mortgages for people who, but for the financial crisis, could have put enough money aside.

The checks are in place. Applicants will need to prove they can repay the loan before they pick up the front door key. As I said to the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), this is not a scheme for second home owners, but the rules need to be carefully worded so we do not slam the door on parents who want to do a bit for their kids or prevent people from rebuilding their lives after family breakdown. Unlike Labour, this Government have not given up on growing families who are in properties too small for their needs, buyers looking to make that first step, or tenants who believe they can aim higher. We will continue to work closely with the industry to do everything in our power to make sure home hopefuls realise their dreams.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

As time is short and lots of hon. Members still want to speak, I will concentrate my remarks on two matters: something I was disappointed not to find in the Budget and something I was completely surprised to find in it.

The thing I was disappointed not to find was any change in the Government’s attitude to what has become known as the bedroom tax. I was not naive enough to think that they would make a complete volte face having realised it is such an insidious and wrong-headed policy, but I did think there might be some movement on the kinds of people in households who should be completely exempt. I am thinking of households with a profoundly disabled child or where a house has been specially adapted for someone with a disability. The Government say that people who have had their house adapted can apply for a discretionary housing payment, but it should not be at the discretion of the local authority to decide whether it is affordable to pay the rent on a house that has been specially adapted for an individual.

As someone who has had to adapt a number of houses, I know how difficult it is, how expensive it can be, and how upsetting it can be for the individual. I also know that very often the adaptations are made specifically for the individual, so if the family has to move out of their home as a result of not getting their housing benefit paid in full, the house will not necessarily be any good for any other disabled person. This is wrong-headed—it should never be discretionary. I hope that it is not too late for the Government to make sure that that group of people is exempt from the bedroom tax.

The thing I was surprised to see in the Budget was the change in the date for the introduction of the new single-tier pension. I recognise that this might be a bit academic for hon. Members in the Chamber today, but my Select Committee, the Work and Pensions Committee, was asked to carry out the pre-legislative scrutiny of the changes to the state pension. The Bill that was published had a start date of April 2017, and we had taken all our evidence on that basis. We had asked the industry whether it could be ready by April 2017 and asked the various user groups whether that was a reasonable time scale.

Having taken all that evidence and done the scrutiny work that the Government had asked us to do, it came as a complete surprise when we found in the Budget that the date was to be brought forward by a whole year and the measure will now be implemented from April 2016. It makes a mockery of the pre-legislative scrutiny process that we were not able to do our job properly and ask the right questions. Just a week before, the Minister responsible had said that there would be no slippage in the timetable and that April 2017 would be the implementation date.

One might think that perhaps, because the Budget was covered by all the usual purdah arrangements, the Government were unable to tell us that the measure was going to come in a year earlier, but the information was leaked and was all over the papers the Sunday before. Clearly, the Government knew they were going to change the date. This was obviously very tempting for the Chancellor given that some £5.9 billion is generated by bringing in the change to contracting out, because no one will be contracted out under the new single-tier pension. I am very angry, as you can tell, Mr Deputy Speaker, that this was landed on my Committee at the very last moment.