Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Ben Spencer Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. Fundamentally, this is about fairness. When the triple lock was conceived, no one anticipated a pandemic that would lead to mass redundancies of people predominantly on lower pay, which, in turn, would lead to wage inflation, through those people losing their jobs, and a cash bonanza for pensioners. Most pensioners believe that having an 8% or more rise would be fundamentally unfair.

I want to respond to some of the points about trust. We earn trust by being open and straightforward about difficult decisions that have to be made. We need to explain where we are and why we are doing the things we are doing. Ploughing headlong into this and upholding our manifesto commitment would be clearly ludicrous in the face of the current situation. That would be the way to lose trust in the Government and to lose trust in their competent administration.

None the less, this should be the start of the debate on the broader utility of the earnings component in the triple lock. At the moment, this has been distorted twice now by earnings in the past year. We need to make sure that we are correctly measuring the cost of living and tackling inequalities and pensioner poverty. While we cannot have that extensive debate today, a debate on that is sorely needed.