Superannuation Bill

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman answers his own question when he says that the previous Government did nothing about the problem over the last 10 years. As for this new argument I am hearing expressed by Labour Members, that we had a large deficit in 1945—yes, we did, but we also had large cuts in 1945 and not least to the military because we had just won a war. There are no such easy reductions now because of the mess left by the Labour party—[Interruption.] I will take no lessons from what the hon. Gentleman shouts out from a sedentary position. At one point in the last three years, £8 billion was spent on redundancy payouts. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is willing to defend very high payouts, but we seem to be getting a reaction on the Labour side against any change to anything. It is a great pity that Labour Members do not engage in the process of trying to deal with the deficit as we Conservative Members do.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I would like to focus on the average rather than the outliers, as that seems to elicit cries of outrage from the Opposition. It is an incontrovertible fact that if we look at the average redundancy payout and average compensation, we find that the average cost in the private sector in autumn 2008 was £8,981, while it was £17,926 in the public sector—almost twice as much. That demonstrates that we have reached a position where, on average, people are being paid twice as much to retire from the civil service as they are to retire from the private sector. There is nothing fair about that.

[Matthew Hancock]

It is always dangerous to give way to my hon. Friend, because she usually puts the point far more lucidly than one could oneself.

I was going to come on precisely to that point—my second point about fairness. Not only is it fair to deal with the deficit and, I think, unfair to give enormous payouts when we have to achieve other very difficult things, but fairness across the economy and across society is also important. The maximum payout in the mandatory private sector compensation scheme, for which this House legislated, is £11,400, yet the proposal is nowhere near that figure within the public sector.

It was interesting to note that when the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), responded to an intervention about whether it was fair to have a similar sort of payoff scheme in the private sector as in the public sector, she effectively said that she was not in favour of equality. I thought that Labour Members were in favour of equality, but obviously not when it does not suit.