Public Service Pensions Bill

Debate between David Anderson and Richard Graham

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Let me begin by declaring an interest. For 20 years I was a member of the mineworkers pension scheme, for 16 years I was a member of the local government pension scheme, and for the past seven years I have been a member of the parliamentary pension scheme.

This is a debate about trust, or rather about the breakdown of trust. The people who are covered by the Bill are those we trust with our most precious possessions: our children, our partners, our parents, our families and our communities. As we all know, when things are going wrong it is the public servants we turn to, and in whom we place the maximum trust.

We turn to the firefighters when our safety is compromised, our homes are at risk and our lives are in danger. We turn to the police when we are in trouble, when we face the despair caused by burglary, car crime or petty theft, when our kids go missing, and when we are being persecuted by nuisance neighbours or antisocial behaviour. We turn to the nurse when we are at our lowest ebb, when we are desperate for help, and when we need real human kindness. We turn to the doctor when we are at a loss to explain our pain, when we need their skills to put us back together again, and when we feel that there is nowhere else to turn.

We turn to the social worker when we are in despair because of our parents’ dementia, when our youngsters are hooked on drugs, and when we need real help to sort out life’s real problems. We turn to the home care worker when we cannot cope any longer with our daily lives, when we need a stranger to come into our homes and become a friend, and when only an extra pair of hands will do. We turn to the teacher to take our children on to the next stage of life’s journey, to shape our kids for the world to come, and to inspire our most precious gifts.

There are so many more: the bin man, the caretaker, the school meals lady, the gravedigger, the gardener, the midwife—and, among the hundreds of others, the so-called back office staff. They are the people who make the front line work effectively, and the people whom the Government disparage most of all. All those people are trusted by us to do the right thing when we need them to. We expect—no, we demand—that they do their jobs properly, and we trust them to do so. But trust is not a one-way street: if we expect those people to do the right thing, we should do the same.

For decades, many of those workers have been putting their trust in us as representatives of the state, and have paid into pension funds every week or every month in the belief that they will be rewarded properly for their work. Let no one in the Chamber claim that public servants somehow get a free ride when it comes to pensions. As was pointed out earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), they have given up a percentage of their pay in order to have a decent retirement and not to have to rely solely on welfare payments in old age.

There is no free lunch for those workers, no matter how much the divisive policy of the Conservative party or the TaxPayers Alliance may try to claim it is so. The Bill clearly undermines the trust that these workers have been able to place in their pensions for decades. Just five years after the agreement to changes that were supposed to be affordable and sustainable, they are seeing the imposition of changes that will significantly weaken their potential to plan properly for their retirement.

We should hear no more about unaffordability until we in the House face up to our culpability in terms of where we find ourselves today. It was Members of Parliament who allowed public sector scheme employers to take lengthy contribution holidays while the lads and lasses at the front end had no such luxury. The classic example, which I raised earlier—and it is not the only one—is Royal Mail. Between 1998 and 2001, it made no contributions whatsoever to the pension fund. Now we are told that the service must be privatised because there is a huge black hole in the pension fund.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Why didn’t you do something about it?

Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund

Debate between David Anderson and Richard Graham

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. This debate should be about the processes of this House—House business is about that, not the politics of this House. It should be about whether we agree that this is the right way for Members of this House, and whoever comes after us, to be treated. This should not be about whether this suits someone’s political agenda and allows them to go outside and say, “Look, MPs think it’s legitimate to have a 5% or 3% levy. Why won’t you do the same?”, but my worry is that that is what this is about.

Let us not forget that we had a debate that concluded three years ago about public sector pensions, including our own. That resulted in big changes to public sector pensions. As has been suggested by our trustee colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe), a cut-off was introduced: people would retain the benefits if they joined before a certain date, but for those who joined after and for new members the pension contributions would be more and their benefits would be less. Public sector workers agreed to that three years ago on the basis that it would make their pensions sustainable for the future. Nothing has changed since then, except for the fact that the Government want to impose a levy on public sector workers to try to dig themselves out of the hole created by the collapse of the global financial system. That approach is clearly wrong. Public sector workers should not have to carry the can for the failure of the banks, and that is clearly the message being given throughout the world.

My worry is that if we tell people that they should start paying 50% more for their pensions at a time when they face pay freezes, freezes of increments, a tax on shift payments, potential redundancies and so on, they will walk away from these pension schemes, as I said earlier. That will be to the detriment of the schemes, investment and the welfare system, because as people reach retirement age there will be a bigger drain on the welfare state than there would have been had they been able to provide for themselves.

This approach is a con trick. It is not about pensions’ stabilisation; it is about taking money out of the pockets of nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, social workers and home care workers to pay for the failures of capitalism. The truth is that we should stand together with those workers, as public sector workers, in a debate that is about our terms and conditions. They have a similar debate about their terms and conditions and we should say, “We stand in solidarity with you. It’s wrong that the Government are robbing you for your pension and taking money out of your pockets.”

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I should declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party group on occupational pensions. I am puzzled by where the hon. Gentleman is going on this, because the motion is surely all about the parliamentary pension fund rather than about those of trade union members in general.

[Mr Anderson]

If the hon. Gentleman had been here from the start of the debate, he would realise that it has expanded into a discussion about public sector pensions because they are included in the motion, in which the Leader of the House has clearly linked this scheme with other applicable schemes. Some of us who signed the amendment want to remove that link so that we can have a debate about when and whether we will give IPSA the right that it should have had since last May. If we had had that debate, we would not be sitting here now and we could have talked about the issue that most people in the House today want to talk about.

Ultimately, we are showing support for other public sector workers and we are not saying that we are a special case. We are saying that the Government should not make any public sector worker a special case by making them pay a levy to subsidise the failure of the banking system.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between David Anderson and Richard Graham

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

That is true, but the managers have not made the best of the deal that they have been given. They have received plenty of public money, but they have not succeeded. There are a number of reasons for that, but in recent months we have seen a break from it. We have seen new management; we have also seen the trade unions presenting a modernisation plan that can and will work. Those developments are being stopped in their tracks by the attitude of the Government, who want privatisation at all costs.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the other side of the equation, which focuses on the agreement between Royal Mail and the post offices, is the amount of business that post offices can do by other means? That revolves first around their ability to distribute financial services—access to banking and credit union arrangements—and secondly around their role as “front of office” providers of a series of services for customers coming from other Departments. I hope that the Minister will tell us more about that.

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Colchester, the post office network is unique. Over the past few years, however, we have let the country down by allowing it to be weakened. I must admit that I have argued against that in the House: I have argued against my own Government. The network is being offered a huge opportunity, but the security of being in the public sector will make it even more possible for it to succeed. If it is allowed to leave that sector and to face unbridled competition, it will fall apart.