Social Security Benefits

Debate between Dan Tomlinson and Lee Dillon

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet) (Lab)]

First, I echo the comments of others in praising the Minister for his work on this issue over decades in this place. I saw it before becoming a Member of Parliament during my time working in the charity sector at the Resolution Foundation and most recently at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I was working on these issues, and I always knew then that we had a friend in Parliament who cared deeply about the welfare system and about the needs of people receiving benefits and support from the state, and who also, like me, wants to see more people being supported to move into employment. Even though I am not going to focus on that topic today as I want to talk about pensions, I do want to put on record my thanks for his service, and I am glad to see him as a Minister.

I want to start by talking about an institution that is not often discussed in this place but that is crucial to all of our lives and shapes a lot of politics even though we do not remark on it too much: the family. That is the institution that almost all of us are closest to and that shapes so much of the way we see the world. It is important that we as policymakers—as people sitting here in the House of Commons—do not just think of individuals as people on their own who are separate from one another and that we instead remember that we all exist in families. If we look at someone’s biography online, it might say they are a father and a husband, because our families are a big part of our identities. We would do well to remember that.

Sometimes our politics and our media might want to push us into discussing pensions in a way that promotes the salience of a war between the generations, but nothing could be further from the truth.

[Mr Dillon]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of family and I could not agree more, but does he also agree that a family is a unit designed by that family and an arbitrary limit of a two-child benefit cap does nothing to protect that family unit if they have more than two children?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I grew up in poverty. We had no money and lived in social housing. I had free school meals throughout my childhood, and the three of us were in emergency and temporary accommodation as well. And I know the benefit system was there for my mum and for us, and I have confidence that this Government will make the decisions that we need to make to ensure that our welfare system is there for families like the one I grew up in. I know a review is looking at universal credit and the welfare system, and I look forward to it reporting in the months ahead. This is a really important issue, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it.

On families and the state pension, often people want to pit the young and the old against one another, but the evidence shows that young people are one of the most supportive groups for the increase in state pension. That is in part because we—I still call myself young now, in my early 30s—know and have seen throughout our lives how much people who are retired, such as our grandparents or older people we know in the community, have contributed to our lives and our families and also the lives of our communities. Also, to put on my economist’s hat, increases in the state pension and support for the triple lock, which we on this side of the House steadfastly support, will benefit young people the most because an extra few pence on the state pension today means an extra few pounds—or tens of pounds or, depending on which generation we are talking about, hundreds of pounds—in the future because of the way these things compound over time. It is really important we continue to support the state pension and the triple lock.