Pensions

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We are looking carefully at the other Cridland recommendations. Obviously, there are issues that have an impact across Government, but it is right to move swiftly on the key recommendation—on the state pension age—to give people as much advance notice as possible. However, my hon. Friend makes a good point about the communication process and so on, and those things will need to be determined nearer the time. As I said, we are 20 years away from the point at which this change takes effect, but we are determined to ensure that it is brought to the attention of all those who are affected.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

On the issue of the WASPI women raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the essence of their complaint, in some respects, is the fact that some of them were not even notified of the change that had occurred. Some were notified late, some were notified after it happened, and some received no notification at all. This point has been put time and again to the Government, and it is about time they came up with an answer to it. Instead of driving the WASPI women to take court action, why do not the Government give them a fair deal?

[Mr Gauke]

Some 5 million letters were sent out to the addresses that the Government had. As I say, the changes made in the 1995 Act were many, many years in advance of when they took effect. None of those women born in the 1950s had had their state pension age put back by more than 18 months by the Pensions Act 2011.

State Pension Age for Women

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris]

I do not think that is necessarily a fair reflection. The changes were accelerated in 2011 and, for the record, I do not think that women were given adequate time. In fact, they were not given individual notification that the legislation had changed, and I think that Parliament and Government had a duty to notify all those affected at the earliest opportunity.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

On the point about the abuse of procedure inherent in the non-notification of those affected, is my hon. Friend aware that the WASPI women are now seeking legal advice from Bindmans as to whether the non-notification was improper and indeed an abuse of procedure? Would the money not be much better used by the Government to settle this case, over which they have procrastinated disgracefully?

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful for that very pertinent intervention; it gives the Minister an opportunity to find a solution. I am not sure what the cost of a collective action would be: HMRC suggested £2.4 million; the real figure is probably £3.5 million. If all those cases of maladministration were found against the Government, we could be looking at a huge settlement. Given that the Prime Minister seems to have discovered the magic money tree, perhaps a few leaves could be brought down to mitigate the effects for those who are worst affected.

In this new Parliament, it is my intention to work with all Members, irrespective of party, to secure justice for the WASPI campaigners. As I mentioned before, the arithmetic has changed. It would have been difficult to secure meaningful changes to help the women affected without the support of the Government in the last Parliament. However, we now have that opportunity.

I have received the names of those Members who signed the WASPI pledge and there are 20 Conservative and Democratic Unionist party Members in that number. That is a significant number, for people following the maths—I see the Government Whips here. I am confident that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North will outline the Opposition’s position and the support Labour would offer to the women affected by the changes. However, in this Parliament, the extent and scope of any changes, transitional arrangements, bridging pensions or compensation depend upon those 20 Members from the Conservative party and the DUP. I would say to those 20 right hon. and hon. Members that they hold the balance of power on this issue.

I urge the Government to take a pragmatic approach. I am concerned that, to date, the Department for Work and Pensions has failed to provide an adequate and substantive response to the letter from Bindmans, the legal representatives of the WASPI campaign, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) raised. That has highlighted the maladministration by the Government—

Amendment of the Law

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I think I have just told the House. It is always good to ask another question when I have just answered it. The jobs that we are providing are paid well. We have seen a rise of 2.1% in private sector pay against inflation of 0.3% now, and a rise in public sector pay of 0.7%—somewhat over and above inflation.

So we have seen unemployment fall to pre-recession levels. The number of out of work benefits has fallen to its lowest for a generation, and the number of workless households has fallen to the lowest on record.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Precisely on employment at record levels and the other boasts that the right hon. Gentleman has made, why then are national insurance and tax receipts way below budget and employment above budget? Does that not reflect the quality and level of the employment that is being offered—1.8 million zero-hours contracts, for example?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I respect the hon. Gentleman and I am glad he asked me that, because it allows me to point out something that I was going to come to later. We have raised the thresholds on taxation. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the insurance levels are low. I am proud of that. I am proud that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is also proud of the fact that we are raising the point at which people pay tax for the first time. The real reason behind all these facts and any other issues that the hon. Gentleman raises in this regard is the fact that the previous Government saw the economy go over the edge of a cliff, and we have been picking it up ever since. If the question is why it is not perfect yet, the answer is that we still have some way to go, but we are making progress and going in the right direction.

Through this Government’s employment programme we are ensuring a jobs recovery for all. I want to point out some of the figures: 2 million apprenticeship starts since the beginning of this Government; over 1 million claimant commitments signed—as people go in to sign on to jobseeker’s allowance, setting out and reinforcing people’s obligations; work experience for 250,000 young people; 60,000 start-up businesses through the new enterprise allowance; and the Work programme helping more long-term unemployed people back into work than any other programme before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Reeves]

We know that still too many people are not even paid the minimum wage, and we know that the number of people paid less than the living wage has increased from 3.4 million to 4.9 million in the past few years. It is also true that we need to do more to ensure the minimum wage is always enforced, which is why we have said we would increase fines for non-payment to £50,000 and why we would give more powers to local authorities to ensure that the minimum wage is always paid.

[Mr Robinson]

Will my hon. Friend confirm what the Secretary of State failed to confirm? What she has clearly exposed this afternoon, supported by an earlier intervention, is that there have been 1.8 million zero-hours contracts in the past five years. As a consequence, tax and national insurance receipts are, cumulatively, £100 billion below the Government’s own projections. That is at the heart of the problem.

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is right. Income tax and national insurance receipts have fallen short of forecasts by a staggering £97 billion in the life of this Parliament. As he makes clear, too many people are working on zero-hours contracts or in very low-paid jobs where they just cannot make ends meet.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It does seem strange that the House cannot debate the amendment in the names of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), the hon. Member for Chelmsford—

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Colchester, for God’s sake. [Laughter.]

[Mr Robinson]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell)—I am so sorry—and other very distinguished honourable dissidents opposite, who are clearly being silenced for some reason or other; I cannot comment on why. I thought the amendment very apropos and exactly to the point in all respects. I am sure that it has not been withdrawn, so quite why it has not been chosen for debate I cannot think. It is a pity, because we could have probed even further the support of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) for it and for the package as a whole, which he was trying to defend last Wednesday with as much discomfort as is evident amongst the Liberals who have not yet entirely been bought by, or who have not bought into, the so-called coalition policies.

It is very sad. There has been nothing sadder, in my opinion, than the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), who is now the Business Secretary, coming around to explain why he supports the Budget. One of the two reasons that he gave was essentially that he had been, belatedly—I think his leader got there first—to see the Governor of the Bank of the England, who had assured him that a crisis was imminent, that we were going to be downgraded and that we would be in the same position as Greece, all of which would happen in a matter of days or hours, if he and the Liberal party did not agree to every measure that the coalition subsequently put forward. All of that should have been entirely predictable at any point before or during the election, even as the bond market strengthened and the UK position strengthened during the election, and even as we learned afterwards that the funding requirement is going to be £20 billion to £30 billion less than expected. Apparently, the leadership of the Liberal party fell for the oldest trick in the book, the bankers’ scare, which has gone on for centuries—classically, of course, with Montagu Norman and all the rest in the 1930s taking that party and this country to the brink of collapse.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that the same Governor of the Bank of England who backed the stimulus under the previous Government is now backing the present Government’s policies—to the detriment of the public?

[Mr Robinson]

I note also that when the Governor was still an economist, before he converted to being a banker, he signed the famous letter of 364 economists, which he has now, in a piece of classic recantation, given up on.

All those considerations point to the fact that events could have been predicted and should have been accommodated. We should not have reached the situation in which we had the Business Secretary proudly telling the House—I still cannot believe this every time I read it:

“Those factors drove the economy in terms of demand”—

the factors being monetary policy and devaluation of the pound—

“and they will continue to do so.”

So, we are to have monetary easing and a continued devaluation of the pound. I do not think that either is remotely likely. He went on:

“There is a reason for believing that that is what will happen: the Governor of the Bank of England called for this Budget and has now got it, and he has every reason to understand the need for monetary policy to support recovery.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 316.]

Well, over to you, Mervyn, and good luck!

It really is absurd. It is one thing to hand over control of the money supply and monetary policy to the Governor. We did that back in 1997, and I think that was a good move. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) nods, and I know that he was in agreement with that move. However, it is quite another thing to say, “Look, we are giving up on fiscal policy too; you can have the whole of the economy.” When we did what we did, we joked amongst ourselves that we had got rid of one half of economic policy—notably the monetary side—to the Governor and that it would only be a matter of time before he laid claim to and was given the whole of it. Joke though that was, it has come to pass under this Government. That is sad and regrettable. The Work and Pensions Secretary is sincere in what he wants to do, but he has had to absorb many cuts, which will make his job much more difficult, as was brilliantly exposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who spoke for the Opposition.

However, it is not just that. The only two sure things about the Budget is that it will increase unemployment and reduce growth. That we can predict, because the Office for Budget Responsibility has told us. Beyond that, the Government refuse to give any distributional analysis. Beyond the second year, we do not know what will happen, except that the OBR has pencilled in some figures for growth that it says are hazardous in the extreme.

The Budget is an enormous gamble at the great cost of the working people in this country. It is a gamble based on the assumption that the Governor will increase quantitative easing when he said he would not. Perhaps in some magical way he will take other powers to deal with the fiscal constraints imposed by the Budget, because he can do nothing else. He cannot reduce interest rates much more, unless he wants to reduce them from 0.5% to 0%, or unless he starts shelling money out, which is hardly credible. He said he would not do any of those things, so the truth is that we face a situation in which the future of the country is being gambled.

Apart from the good intentions of, and the megalomania that seems to be developing in, the Bank, that gamble rests on three factors: an increase in inventories, meaning an increase in output; an increase in investment; and an increase in private sector activity. Who really believes in their heart that any of those factors can be counted on, especially given that the Government have made the investment route highly unlikely by reducing capital allowances? They are served at the moment by a Financial Secretary who told the Committee that considered the previous Finance Bill that they would reduce such allowances—on nearly all counts, and they have been as good as if not better than their word. He could see no reason why investment should not be reduced to the cost of amortisation in manufacturing or industrial enterprises. If that is the negative, neutral view of the need for increased investment and output that infuses the Budget, and in particular the crucial elements highlighted by the OBR—it says that there is a need for greater investment and output, and to rebalance exports—we are in for a big let down on that gamble.

Let us take one other example—Sheffield Forgemasters. Anybody who has dealt with the Government knows that it is virtually impossible to get money out of a shareholder executive. It is like getting money out of a stone, but the firm reached a conditional agreement. That would have made an enormous contribution to the rebalancing of the economy, including in respect of import substitution, and now those products will come in from Japan, because the arrangement was cancelled. I am afraid that in their tone and their measures, the Government are making recovery immensely more difficult and, far from recovery, we face a further period of prolonged deflation.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—