Amendment of the Law

Glenda Jackson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am interested that the hon. Gentleman raises the matter, because it was originally mentioned in the comprehensive spending review. We have stuck to the last Government’s plans on the winter fuel payment. In fact, I was intrigued by the issue so I looked up what the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who is in his place, said when he was Chancellor. He said a lot of straightforward things, and I congratulate him on that. He said about the winter fuel payments that they

“were temporarily increased to £250, and £400 for the over-80s…I will guarantee this higher winter fuel payment for another year.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 263.]

When we look at the Red Book produced at the time, we find that there was no allocation for any more winter fuel payments. We stuck to the last Government’s plans. Perhaps the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) should ask his right hon. Friend why he did not plan for more. We did exactly what we said we would do.

The real problem is that 7 million people are not saving enough for the retirement that they want, and few will be able to rely on a guaranteed income in retirement, because the numbers saving in defined benefit schemes in the private sector have more than halved in the last 20 years. In fact, less than half of the entire working-age population is currently saving in a pension at all.

Our plans automatically to enrol all workers in a pension scheme will make a real difference—we have continued the work started by the previous Government—but my hon. Friend the Minister and I do not think that auto-enrolment will work unless it pays people to save, which is why we have determined finally to get to grips with the state pension. As all hon. Members know, not only is the state pension extremely complex, leaving millions of people unsure as to what they will receive in retirement, but it completely fails to reward those who make the effort to save but who do not quite get there.

Too many people reach state pension age having scrimped and saved all their life to find that others, who have not saved or who have made no effort to save, get the same income as them through pension credit. The Budget is about rewarding those who do the right thing, which is why we will shortly publish a Green Paper on state pension reform, with an option for a single-tier state pension, which will provide a clear foundation for saving. We currently estimate that it will be set at around £140 a week, which is above the level of the means-tested guarantee credit, but we must send out the clear message across the welfare and the pension systems that people will be better off in work than on benefits, and better off in retirement if they save.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

If the change in the pension system is to benefit the whole country and all pensioners—current and future—why have the Secretary of State’s policies targeted specifically women born between ’53 and ’54? They expected to retire, but now discover that they must work at least four years longer. That does not strike me as a policy that benefits the entire population.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady’s comment on working four years longer is simply incorrect, but I take what she says. The reality is that the Government are doing what we were asked to do—equalise the ages—and increasing the age to 66. I recognise the group she mentions, but they will be covered and supported in other ways anyway, so this is not a loss—

[Glenda Jackson]

It is a specific, targeted group.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is not a specific group in the sense that they were targeted. That policy is part of trying to get the pensionable age up first to 65, and then to 66.

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[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I must tell the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) that her speech was a bit like “all our yesterdays”. The one thing that she did not seem to think would create jobs in this country was slashing the national minimum wage, and I was surprised that she did not suggest that.

Today’s debate opened with one of the most lamentable speeches that I have ever heard the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions deliver, in which he presented—as have other Government Members—the rosy view that the Government’s proposals will automatically create jobs, that there will be people who will be qualified to fill them, and that the future will be golden. If we look at the Red Book, which Government Members have waved in our faces on many occasions, we see that what the Government are setting in train is a Budget that will create a vast increase in unemployment. Unless they intend to abolish the whole benefits system at a stroke, an astronomical amount will have to be spent on unemployment benefit and passported benefits—although, of course, they may wipe all those out as well.

Government Members have the audacity to accuse us of frightening some of the most vulnerable people in our society, but it is not us who are frightening them. In my constituency and in those of Government Members, it is the Government who seem to look at nothing but the bottom line. It is they who introduce swingeing policies which, nine times out of 10, do not mesh, and the Secretary of State responsible for delivering those policies does not know what impact they will have on the ground.

A precise example from today’s debate was what I understand to have been the initial proposal from the Department for Work and Pensions in regard to jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit. It was proposed that 10% should automatically be slashed from the housing benefit of anyone who had failed to find a job after 12 months on jobseeker’s allowance despite doing everything demanded by the Government—and that is housing benefit which is being capped.

It is to his shame that, in his opening speech, the Secretary of State ran again with a canard that he is on record as saying he hoped would not be fulfilled: that the majority—he did not use the word “majority”, but it was implied—of people on housing benefit are living in properties where the rent is £100,000 a week. Everyone in the House, and certainly the Secretary of State, ought to know that the majority of people claiming housing benefit are pensioners, people with disabilities, or people on very low pay.

Many hard-working families in this country are entirely dependent on housing benefit. Nowhere is that more marked than in constituencies such as mine in central London, where housing, travel and training costs are vastly above the national average. However, nothing in the Budget appears to acknowledge regional variations, which will of course affect the potential for people to find jobs even if the private sector is capable of providing them.

Another remarkable feature of many speeches from Government Members was their contempt for public sector workers. It seemed that none of them wanted additional nurses in their hospitals, additional doctors in their surgeries, or additional teachers in their schools. Certainly we know that they do not want more policemen, because their numbers are being slashed all over the country, as will be the very people on whom the most vulnerable in our society depend.

That, of course, is the other great canard. This Government came into office saying that they would take tough decisions. They said the road was bumpy, but that they would protect the most vulnerable. They have betrayed the most vulnerable, however—the very young, the very old, people with disabilities. Women are a marked target for this Government. We women are clearly expected to have the broadest shoulders in the country because the cuts will fall on us. The Government are expecting women to go back to work—if there is a job to go to, of course—while at the same time taking away child care support, which is the absolute bedrock that enables a woman with children to go back to work.

The Government have markedly failed to think through their grievous policies. This is not a Budget for investment or growth. Rather, this is the Budget of a group of people who have markedly failed to understand the realities of the situation facing millions of people in this country who do want to work, who wish to take this country forward, and who have optimism and believe in all of us. The people who do not believe in the people of this country, or indeed in this country itself, are the Conservatives.

[Stephen Lloyd]

rose—