Pensions Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

Despite the guarantee credit not changing a lot, there is roughly a halving of the overall reliance on means-tested benefits, so there is a move, but I acknowledge that it is not by any means a complete elimination of the use of means-tested benefits.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I think the Minister may be offering a rather dramatic understatement. It is not an elimination; it is a change of 1%. As we established in the Committee on Monday, most of the reduction in means-testing is related to the abolition of the savings credit, which is removing access to something for people. If my noble friend is right, he has hit on something quite extraordinary, which is that despite the Government saying that the STP will be pitched at a level above the means-tested level for the pension credit, it is in fact, according to his modelling, pitched at a level that will not lift anyone but the 1% who get it out of means-testing. Surely the whole argument collapses at that point.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the guarantee credit does go down in absolute terms. It is already a small percentage of the total. When one gets into arguments about data it gets very confusing, so I will set this issue out very clearly. As I understand it, the issue is about the number of people on means-testing as we look forward into the single tier over the decades. The subsidiary question behind that is what it does to the incentive to save. I will address those two questions with some proper data in a letter rather than trying to do so off the top of my head when I am not absolutely confident about providing exactly the right information.

The start rate of the full single-tier pension should not be viewed in isolation but in combination with the private pension income that some 6 million to 9 million people will gain from having been automatically enrolled in a workplace pension. An inflated start would be unaffordable and unsustainable, and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I am very grateful to the Minister for his offer to write to all Members of the Committee. Will he prioritise that letter and write it before the Committee next sits, rather than waiting until we come back at a later stage of the Bill?

[Lord Freud]

Yes; I am trying to get letters out at great speed. I am expecting to sign letters relating to the questions from Monday later today in order to get them to Members of the Committee as quickly as possible, so that is a three-day turnaround. I will aim to do something rapidly for today as well.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as I said even before the noble Baroness intervened, even though the numbers today are relatively small, I am not decrying that particular issue. I was referring to the 50,000 figure—the current estimate of those affected. Let me get on with my argument and not worry about that at the moment.

The drive to universal credit is to allow greater flexibility in the labour market, so zero-hour contracts work with universal credit. There may be elements of zero-hour contracts that are of concern, particularly if the balance of power between the employee and the employer is unfair, but universal credit works with that flexibility of the labour market.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I understand the argument the Minister is making, but let us suppose that the woman described by my noble friend is in a relationship with a civil partner or a husband. What is the most the husband could earn before she would effectively be excluded from universal credit? As they do not have children, if her earnings are low but his are at a reasonable level, she would no longer be able to benefit from his pension. So you cannot assume that she would be caught up in universal credit because her earnings are low.

[Lord Freud]

I accept that. This is for low-paid households. That is what universal credit is. There will be some people in higher paid households who will have to take a view on how to make their arrangements through voluntary NICs or whatever. I accept that point.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee that I want to raise another substantial issue. After this, I promise that the issues that I raise will get smaller, but other noble Lords’ amendments may be appropriately substantial.

This is about the married women’s dependency pension. This is the first of three amendments. The second amendment is intended to address the issue that widows may face and the third amendment addresses those that divorcées may face. They try to avoid the cliff edge for some vulnerable women—please forgive the political incorrectness. This also applies to men and civil partners, and later amendments apply to male divorcés and widowers.

The peak cost of some £200 million which was suggested by the Minister in the other place would fall in the 2030s for all three groups, including overseas spouses, I gather, which suggests a lower figure, perhaps £100 million a year, during the next 10 years or so. I am grateful to the Box for giving me some additional information on numbers, although I am still not clear about costs. If the Minister can clarify that, that would be helpful.

The Government have rightly helped 10,000 women—it is a diminishing number—who paid a reduced stamp and have put them effectively on to the equivalent of the former 60% dependant pension. At the same time, they are taking that same pension from about 5,000 married women who would otherwise qualify for it each year. This amendment calls for a transitional period of 15 years, as urged by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on this part of the Bill, having taken a considerable amount of evidence, including some very effective evidence from Age Concern.

This amendment seeks to help women, not many of them, who have, for one reason or another, lived their lives among an older, shall we call it—although I do not mean this to be patronising at all—Daily Mail model, without any expectation that the Government were going to change the rules around them.

On the one hand, the Government are about to reward about 4 million non-working wives with a marriage tax allowance for their husband worth £3.85 a week, costing £700 million a year, and on the other hand they are taking away a £66 per week pension, also derived from marriage—bingo for marriage—at a fraction of the cost of the marriage tax allowance, from older women who have no time to rebuild. The Government are giving to married women with working husbands and taking away from married women who now face retirement with no pension of their own. Husbands—younger men—immediately benefit from a tax allowance transfer which has come as a windfall, while older women lose support that they have been promised all their lives. It is bizarre. Why not spend the first on the second? It will pay for itself several times over and will be far more useful and far more fair for, given their age and such short notice, older women can do little or nothing to build a pension of their own greater than the 60% that they would get as a derived right. That would take 16 years.

Women approaching retirement age had expected the 60% pension and planned their retirement around it. They had, and have, a legitimate expectation. The younger woman and her husband—they are not just cohabiting—receiving the £3.85 household income have not built their lifetime around it and planned for it, unlike the 60% pension. That is simply a windfall. It is unexpected and unplanned and, in my view, much less deserved than the pension that older women were entitled to expect. That younger woman is likely to have many years ahead both to work and gain income and to secure her own retirement with a full pension. I cannot think what mentality, frankly, has produced that juxtaposition and this disjuncture between those two groups, both of whom derive their rights through marriage.

In the other place, the Minister made much of the fact that a significant proportion—more than two-thirds—were male spouses or partners who were born or lived overseas. I now calculate, with the revised statistics that we have had, that huge number to be all of 2,000. However, I have tried to cover that with my,

“ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom”,

which has a good case behind it and which will not trouble the Government.

Indeed, the Minister may also argue, as Steve Webb did in the other place, that he finds it hard to conceive of women who might fall into this group given the wide array of credits—the up to 50 years of working life, which would mean that you start collecting credits at the age of 15 to bring you up to 65, and the 35 years’ NI record requirement. Let me help him, if I may, with two possible categories of women, both of which I am familiar with; I am sure my noble friends have other examples.

I am aware of at least two groups of women who continue to need transitional protection. To get the equivalent of 60% of the future pension equivalent, they would need cover on their own record of at least 16 years—less than that, and they are worse off. Younger women, I readily agree, have time to reshape their plans. They also have appropriate childcare credits, not HRP, which required you to earn actual NI years for it to come into play. Many may have undertaken part-time work above the LEL and may have signed on for JSA, all of this bringing entitlement to a pension of their own. That is as it should be. But women in their 50s do not have that, hence the 15-year transitional period.

Who are likely to lose? The first group is older women with patchy NI years. They got HRP and perhaps did not understand what happened when we replaced it with childcare credits. They did small jobs below the LEL for many years knowing that they would get the 60%. That is what women have told me. They did miscellaneous caring for elderly relatives, credit for which was introduced only in the past five years, which is too late to benefit most of them.

Perhaps their husband’s job took them around the country and they were unable to keep finding new jobs above the LEL for themselves while they moved house and supported his career. As we have discussed, service wives are an extreme case of this. They juggled untidy lives; lives which did not conform to NI requirements. But they knew—or they thought they knew—that they could count on their husband's pension to give them a dependent’s fund. Virtually overnight, as there are no transitional arrangements, that has been taken away.

The Pensions Advisory Service, which I quoted on Monday, completed its survey of nearly 1,000 women and women often commented with additional views. I quote from one of them.

“Had to give up my part-time job when my grand-daughter was born to look after her full-time while her mother and father worked. I’m now desperately looking for work”,

because the NI years have risen to 35. She thought that with 30 years she was all right. She is now 58 and has tried hard to find work but without success. She continues:

“I am getting very worried about the future. I go to bed thinking about it and wake up to face it all again”.

She has a patchwork. She has missing years and we are told that she cannot buy them back before 2006 once universal credit comes into play. Even if she had voluntary NICs, she could not deploy them in circumstances such as hers.

The second group is women who have had poor health for most of their lives—depression, arthritis, angina or diabetes—and they either did not think about or know about incapacity benefits or perhaps believed that the condition was not so incapacitating that they would qualify, especially given the somewhat deliberate stigmatising in the past few years of benefit claimants. Frankly, there has been humiliating treatment of certain claimants by ATOS. I know that the Minister will not want me to recite some of the cases that I have experienced, but they are relevant to this. Their husbands earned enough and, given their poor health, keeping house and perhaps helping out neighbours or local charities was as much as they could manage. If this sounds improbable to the Minister, we are talking about women approaching pension age where the DWP’s own research on benefit take-up among entitled but not claiming pensioners shows how deeply ingrained is the reluctance to claim means-tested benefits.

Such women may have had a few years of NI work behind them but not enough to bring them over the 10-year threshold. If they had nine NI credits or years, they could at least have received £36 a week that they do not in the conventional way, which would normally not have needed to come into play because the 60% was more generous. That de minimis has been removed, although I hope and expect that some women affected will buy an extra year to get over the 10-year hurdle and enjoy £40 a week. However, they probably do not have the time, good health or employability, or in some cases the income, to bring it up to 16 years, or the 60% level that they reasonably expected.

Let me again quote from the TPAS survey. Asked about how they would cope, one woman wrote that she was,

“sick and disabled so unable to save or plan, though very worried as had break in NI due to illness but never claimed benefit”.

Some, but few, I suspect, of the 30,000 affected will be able to afford to buy back missing years. I am not sure whether they can buy them back previous to 2006—we had confirmation on Monday that they could not—where the missing years may have occurred. That relaxation appears to expire in 2015 and the Minister is not continuing it from 2016 onwards.

The Minister at the other end several times argued that if the DWP introduced any transitional period, this would be found by the courts to be arbitrary and would presumably be overturned. He seemed very nervous about the courts; he introduced this argument at least twice when reading his speeches. I am surprised by this. In my experience, if Parliament’s policy intent is clear—see Roe v Wade—it would not fall to judicial review unless it could be shown that it was a decision that no reasonable person could have made. That is quite a high hurdle and clearly not the case here, so if the Minister is going to argue that, may we have proper information about the legal advice that the DWP has received on which the Minister at the other end so heavily relied?

We phased in the rise in people’s pension age over a decade. We are scrapping the pension that they might have drawn at pension age, effectively overnight. I do not think that is fair. If we feel the need to give adequate warning when raising the state pension age, as we did, we should provide adequate warning and therefore transitional arrangements for the most obvious group of real, not notional, losers. It is not difficult. We have the precedent of the reduced married women’s stamp, which we should follow. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 23, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Browne, and to Amendment 12 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollis, who has outlined the basic issue at stake here. I need not repeat that. As we know, the single-tier pension will be based solely on an individual’s contribution or credit record. Everyone will get out depending on what they put in; as they sow, so shall they reap. But we are concerned in this group with people who chose to sow as a couple, expecting to reap in like fashion, when from now on it will be every reaper for himself or herself.

Changes in labour market participation rates and social structures mean that we recognise that, in future, a system built on individual contributions is the right way forward. This year, 75% of those retiring will have complete contribution records of 30 years. It will be interesting to know what happens when that moves up. However, it is obviously important that the appropriate protections remain in place for those who have caring responsibilities or childcare responsibilities and that adequate information is put out. Subject to those caveats, we accept the direction of travel.

However, we are concerned to understand fully the impact of this provision in the short term on those who will lose entitlements derived from a partner’s NI contribution record on which they may have done their retirement planning. It is crucial, for the reasons that my noble friend outlined, that the transitional arrangements are fair and seen to be fair. We have had representations from groups working with older people, particularly older women, highlighting a range of circumstances in which women did not build up any entitlement. There are women who were entitled to credits but did not bother to claim them as they were planning to piggyback off their husbands’ records and there was no advantage in doing so. Then there were women who worked part-time around caring commitments, as my noble friend described here and in the last amendment. There were women who chose to do voluntary work, knowing that their husband’s pension would support them and who were often the pillars of their local community. I see a lot of them in Durham, who helped to support their neighbours and really were the backbone of the local community.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Why does the Minister think that the courts would not support us in having transitional arrangements for those who are ordinarily resident? I am not a lawyer, but, in my somewhat limited experience of judicial reviews, there have been a number of challenges. The two criteria I lay down are: was Parliament’s intention was clear—Roe v Wade—and would it be a position that a reasonable person would think was not unreasonable. The addition of ordinarily resident would seem to fit the criteria for transitional arrangements. If the Minister could help us on why that is not the case, I would be interested.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My question is slightly different, but perhaps the Minister could answer them both at once. Are the costings net of any additional expenditure on pension credit?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, it is a net figure. On the legal position, clearly the noble Baroness will remember that we are in the European Union and there are definitions of which kind of payments are transportable, so to speak, and which ones can be restricted. That is where our legal issue comes from. Therefore, rather than go into huge detail on that—

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As he said, we can change the legislation, as the Government propose, but he and she cannot go back in time and change their lives. We are talking about an average of 7,000 widows and widowers a year, which is a tiny number. I hope that we can help them. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on this amendment. I was exceedingly brief last time, but since the Minister did not feel any compulsion to do likewise, I shall take my time this time round. The amendment again raises a particular question about transitional protection. I will not revisit the substantive debate that we have just had, but I want to highlight a couple of points. To do that, I want to use a case study given to us by DWP officials.

In this case, we have a couple who have been named Jack and Jill—a slight lack of imagination, but better than the DEL and AMI beloved of Treasury case studies. Jill reaches state pension age in 2020 and her husband Jack reaches state pension age in 2018. Conveniently, they have average life expectancy, so Jack survives until 2040 and Jill until 2044. In this case, Jill had 15 qualifying years of contributions.

Under the current system, Jill would get a married woman’s pension of £64. Under the new system she would get £62. But the real crunch comes when Jack sadly dies. At that point, Jill would receive £113 a week under the current system. Under the new system she would receive only £62 in single-tier pension. That is a huge difference and a real worry to the real Jills of this world, and even more so to those who outlive their husbands by more than two years. The Minister may say that Jill can claim pension credit, but the DWP did not tell me how much Jill has in the bank, so it may be that her savings would preclude that. Even if they do not, I have reason to believe that Jack always thought that his contributions would be enough to ensure that Jill got a pension without having to turn to means-tested benefits. I would be grateful if the Minister could comment on Jack and Jill.

There is some transitional protection in place and I want to be sure that I have understood it properly. If I understand the rules correctly, if the dependant—in other words the person seeking to benefit from the derived entitlement—reaches state pension age before 6 April 2016, he or she would be entitled to derived and inherited state pension as under the current system, but only based on the other person’s national insurance contributions as paid up to 4 April 2016. If he reaches state pension age before April 2016 but she does not then she gets no derived or inherited entitlement. In either case, it is possible for the surviving partner to receive 50% of the additional state pension accrued after 2002 and before April 2016, and between 50% and 100% of the additional state pension accrued under SERPS before 2002, depending on when the contributor reached or would have reached state pension age. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether that is correct.

If it is, perhaps the Minister could answer a different question. He spent a lot of time in his response to the last amendment stressing the simplicity of this case in order to respond to a concern that I had made at Second Reading. I am flattered that he read it so carefully. However, does the Minister think that Jack and Jill’s case or the description that I have just outlined passes that simplicity test? If I am right, will the Government then tell the Committee two other things? First, what consultation have the Government done with the real Jacks and Jills of this world and, secondly and more crucially, what steps are the Government taking to identify and warn those couples who are in this situation and may still be married, widowhood not yet having broken in, what the impact of these changes will be so that they can start to make provision as soon as possible?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have already set out the Government’s position on the issue of the ability of one individual to derive a pension based on another’s national insurance record. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, pointed out somewhat bitterly, I did that at some length, so I will try to be as brief as she was in dealing with this. I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, wishes to discuss the three interrelated issues separately, so I want to address her specific concerns here.

It is the ability for individuals to receive a survivor’s state pension, often called a widow’s pension, to which we have now turned. Let me outline the different groups that this amendment concerns. These are, first, those who would otherwise have gained a married woman’s pension and, secondly, those who would not have been entitled to the married woman’s pension because they have more than the equivalent of a 60% basic state pension in their own right but less than 100%, so would otherwise have received a widow’s pension. There will also be some who, regardless of whether they derive any basic state pension, may have expected to inherit some additional state pension.

We are putting in place transitional arrangements for that last group for inherited additional state pension. This will mean that where a survivor is in a marriage or civil partnership with someone in the current system they will inherit additional state pension, as now. For those where both parties are in the single tier, the survivor will be able to inherit 50% of the protected payment, where one exists. This is what Clause 7 and Schedule 3 achieve.

Limiting inherited additional state pension and the ability to derive a widow’s pension will, however, mean that some people receive less. In terms of how much those losses are, we estimate that the figure will be about £8 per week in 2025. That is the median figure and is made up mostly of people receiving less by way of inherited additional state pension. This loss is also due to the fact that people cannot carry on building up additional state pension after 2016, limiting the potentially inheritable amount.

However, around three-quarters of people reaching state pension age in the first 10 years of single tier who would have inherited some additional state pension under the current system will receive more single-tier state pension over their lifetime than they would have in the current scheme. This is because the gain from current system inheritance at the point of bereavement—and, potentially, very late in retirement—will be more than offset by the gains in state pension as a result of the single-tier valuation and uprating arrangements.

I think that this particular point feeds through into the issue of fairness. We are giving less to some people but we are using those savings to fund higher entitlements at state pension age for many people. Many people will benefit when they are younger—and by that I mean at the point of state pension age as opposed to widowhood—and are more likely to spend the money than would be the case towards the end of their lives.

On the simplicity test, I have to acknowledge the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that there are elements of complexity in the transition. However, that is because of the current system, not because of the single-tier system.

On the related issue of communications, the core objective of our strategy on communications is to raise awareness of the changes, particularly among those significantly affected by the reforms or those reaching state pension age shortly after the reforms are introduced. As I said on Monday, I will be producing our communications package in the new year.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, mentioned two examples. I think that it would be best to take up the Jack and Jill example with officials later, but her second example seemed to be correct, and I have confirmation of that. I think that she interpreted correctly the different groups—that is, who is in single tier and who is out.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, when I used the example of Jack and Jill, I was not asking whether it was correct. Unless the officials have made a mistake—in which case I am sure they will let me know—I presume it to be so. I was simply using it to demonstrate how much somebody would lose under the system.

[Lord Freud]

I am sorry, I was not referring to the Jack and Jill question; I was referring to the second example, where the noble Baroness asked me whether she had interpreted it correctly. I have the pleasure of telling her that, as always, she is absolutely correct, except of course where she disagrees with me.

I will not go into the arguments on simplicity and clarity or fairness, because the same arguments apply. In the light of my response, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

This amendment moves us into somewhat gentler waters. The amendment calls for a strategy to improve take-up of national insurance credits. It is by way of a probing amendment, seeking clarity on what is planned to encourage greater take-up. In a sense, it is a subset of the debate that we had on Monday about communications in general, which we have touched on today. We had a very thorough note from the Bill team, which confirms that the NI crediting system is comprehensive but also highly complicated. There is a low level of awareness of some credits, carer’s credits in particular, the very aim of which is to protect state pension provision for individuals who take time out of paid work due to caring responsibilities. Of course, the issue especially affects women.

The importance of ensuring take-up of maximum credits is increased under S2P because of the increase from 30 to 35 years in the number of years required for a full state pension and the 10 years’ minimum threshold. This is a reversal of the position whereby the reduction in qualifying years from 44 and 39 to 30 meant that the gaps were not so important. The increase in the number of years to 35 has in part rebalanced that, although the value of credit in the new system would be higher.

We are promised a review of the national insurance recording and operating systems and an HMRC review of deficiency notices. Perhaps the Minister will say a little more about that. There was reference to deficiency notices being suspended for those due to retire on or after 6 April 2016, and the Minister might like to take the opportunity to clarify that. Some awards of credits, of course, are automatic; some have to be claimed, including class 3 credits for foster carers or kinship carers and those caring but not receiving carer’s allowance, and class 1 credits for maternity, paternity or adoption pay, for non-governmental sponsored training, jury service, for those wrongly imprisoned and, as we discussed earlier, for Armed Forces spouses or civil partners. There is also a new issue for those with high income who would be excluded from claiming child benefit.

Our briefing note identifies the carer’s credit as achieving take-up significantly lower than the 2007 legislation anticipated. We acknowledge that those in receipt of universal credit will automatically get a class 3 credit and that this would cover some of these circumstances. However, universal credit will not be fully in place for a number of years and, in any event, there will be some credits which will be claimable. Crediting entitlements has come a long way in recent years, and universal credit looks to improve the position further, but some are still missing out and this needs to be addressed.

I will revert to one point that I touched upon earlier. As I understand it, the credit for universal credit is a class 3 credit and therefore is focused on pension and bereavement entitlements only. Given that employment and support allowance, jobseeker’s allowance and working tax credit are at the moment a class 1 credit—obviously those benefits will be subsumed within universal credit—it seems that we are worsening the position of some groups. I will be interested in the Minister’s response. The purpose is to give the Minister a chance to focus on those who have to claim where take-up is not as it should be and to see what can be done. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McKenzie for giving us the opportunity to touch on this issue and for setting out the challenges in his characteristically clear and well informed style. I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say in response.

I would be grateful if the Minister would answer the following questions. First, will he clarify whether all the routes to gaining national insurance credits which are currently available will continue to be available in the new system on the same terms? Secondly, if not, or if there is any doubt about that, have the Government consulted on changes or will they commit to a public consultation before making any changes? I include within that any changes that are implied or necessitated by the switch to the new pension system or the universal credit system.

My noble friend raised an issue concerning the Government’s strategy. In particular, I am concerned about the categories of people who have actively to make claims for credits and will not get them automatically, even under universal credit. I think he cited all the ones that I have been able to identify, plus child benefit, which I had not noted. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government’s strategy will include elements targeted at those categories of person? Within that, will they consider how they engage with direct routes, rather than just generalised campaigns? My noble friend Lord Browne mentioned that the Armed Forces look for ways to make sure that members of the forces community can take up those credits. Will the Government consider other routes to that—for example, through adoption services or the ways in which the Government already communicate with those in receipt of maternity, paternity, adoption or sick pay? Is the department in discussions with other government departments about the way to take this forward?

My noble friend Lord McKenzie also mentioned take-up. It would be helpful if the Government could report on take-up now and under the new system and tell us how they will monitor that and report to Parliament on it. Finally, will the Minister tell the Committee whether the Government have considered ways in which people might actively be supported in claiming credits for past years, which might now become important, where they would not have been previously?

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for this amendment. I hope that I shall be able to offer some reassurances about the current arrangements and those within the context of the work that we are planning. The existing arrangements provide for national insurance credits to cover a wide variety of contingencies and activities, as he acknowledged. They are generally available to people who are unable to work and pay contributions. This could be because they are unemployed, incapacitated or caring for others, but credits are also available to cover a range of other circumstances—for example, jury service or if an individual is employed but is in receipt of working tax credit.

Credits protect a person’s national insurance record and their future entitlement to benefits. Under the current system, all classes of credits protect the basic state pension, and in certain circumstances an earnings factor credit can be awarded to protect state second pension entitlement, mainly for caring responsibilities and long-term incapacity. I can confirm that the crediting arrangements will be brought forward to the new system and that people will still be able to get credits to protect their single-tier pension position.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and my noble friend Lady Sherlock for her questions. On the latter point, I am not sure that the Minister specifically dealt with whether there would be individual strategies focused on those types of people whom we particularly need to reach, such as carers. On the issue that was just raised about not accessing the benefits through other benefits, the point about contributory ESA and contributory JSA, as I understand it, is that you cannot achieve them only by credits; there has to be a payment arrangement as well to qualify. If the credit is changed, that makes it potentially more difficult than it is at the moment. The Minister mentioned the earnings factor credits but, as I understand it, those disappear because S2P obviously disappears as well in the new regime.

I am comforted by the fact that deficiency notices, perhaps in their new form, are to be reactivated once we get to the stage where the April 2016 data are available, which is helpful. I suppose that, broadly, one accepts that there is going to be a big communications strategy. I see that my noble friend Lady Sherlock is poised to ask a question, so I will give her that opportunity.

[Baroness Sherlock]

Before my noble friend withdraws his amendment, the reason I asked the Minister generally at the beginning about whether all the currently available routes to gaining NI credits would continue on the same terms was precisely to try to draw out the kind of things that my noble friend has been highlighting. If the Minister finds anything else which could possibly fall under that category when he goes back and consults more with his officials, perhaps he might write to us.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will be pleased to do that.

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[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I can understand why the Minister might be reluctant to commit his Government—or indeed a future Government, should one appear before too long—to a particular level of uprating of any benefit. However, the device of my noble friend Lord McKenzie is very interesting. I realise that the Government are finding themselves under increasing pressure to agree to the triple lock, but I suppose that to a degree they are caught in a trap of their own devising, in that the more they trumpet the importance of a triple lock, the more people will expect them to carry on being committed to it. As we discussed on Monday, all the assumptions in the impact assessment and the various illustrations with which we have been furnished are based on the single-tier pension being uprated by the triple lock.

Obviously, the Opposition are in no position to commit to what they might do in any future Government. They would have to make a judgment based on the state of the public finances when they arrived. In the mean time, my noble friend Lord McKenzie makes a very interesting suggestion—that the Government should, if they choose a route other than the triple lock, have to tell Parliament and the public what they have and have not done.

Earnings have been lagging behind prices in all but one of the months since David Cameron became Prime Minister, but we live in hope that that will not always be the case. At that point, the difference could be quite significant and that would have to be taken into account by any future Government. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Whitty]

Before the Minister replies, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who has an amendment in this group, has had to leave. She apologises.