Oral Answers to Questions

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

Carers have a critical role to play in keeping people out of the formal state-run care system, and we will ensure that they get the support that they need in our coming reviews.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

16. What steps he plans to take to reduce the level of pensioner poverty.

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

The Government want to see all pensioners have a decent and secure income in retirement. We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011, with a triple guarantee that pensions are raised by the highest of earnings, prices or 2.5%. We will also protect key benefits for older people.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. What action, if any, is he able to take on a problem he himself identified, namely, the cliff-edge situation of women who have completed 30 years employment and who have made the necessary national insurance contributions, but who were born one or two days too early to get the pension that they deserve?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend raises an important point—in fact, it sounds vaguely familiar—and she is quite right that introducing changes in a cliff-edge manner, as the previous Government did, creates unfairnesses of the sort that she identifies. As she will know, when women are short of the necessary number of years, they can buy voluntary contributions, under a fairly restricted set of circumstances. That will allow some women to get closer to the full pension than they would otherwise have been able to get. However, she is absolutely right that the way in which the scheme was implemented by the previous Government creates an unfair cliff edge.