Oral Answers to Questions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Jamie Stone—welcome back. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I thank right hon. and hon. Members for the kind sentiments that I have received recently.

I am sure the Minister recognises that the lack of available or affordable housing is critical when it comes to rural employment. Indeed, on the west coast of my constituency—opposite the constituency of the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton)—we have almost none at all. Of course, housing is devolved to the Scottish Government, but could the Minister share best practice in England and Wales with those north of the border to see if we can do something about this problem?

[Andrew Western]

May I, too, welcome the hon. Gentleman back to his place?

I would be very happy to ask colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to share any best practice with their Scottish counterparts. This Government are investing £39 billion in the delivery of social and affordable homes because we recognise the issues that the hon. Gentleman sets out. The fundamental starting point for any good life is access to a good-quality, safe and secure home, and that is something we are committed to delivering.

Place-based Employment Support Programmes

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley]

Indeed. I promise Members that I did not give my hon. Friend advance sight of my speech, but I will be talking about JobsPlus in due course. It is an amazing system and an amazing scheme.

I have touched on some of my own experiences as a young man, but it is worth going back to them, because I want to put Members in the shoes of someone who would have really benefited from one of these schemes, had they been running back when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Many families have funny anecdotes about things that children have said, and mine is no different. Perhaps unwisely, I am going to share the funny anecdote that my family tell about something that they say I said back in around 1982, when I was four or five years old—of course, they teased me about it for years afterwards.

Apparently, I asked my parents one day why they watched the news on the telly. In my childhood brain, this made no sense at all. My mum was a dinner lady and my dad worked nights in the local car factory 6 or 7 miles away. I had got it into my head as a little kid that the TV news was only for people who did not have jobs, but my mum and dad had jobs, so what were they doing watching the TV news? It was only about 20 years later that it dawned on me that it was not that TV news in the early 1980s was not for people who did not have jobs, but that it felt like it was only about people who did not have jobs.

Every night on the 6 o’clock news, the headlines were about the unemployment figures—the latest round of lay-offs in some critical industry or other, the factory closures, the countless thousands being put on the sick as a way of keeping the official number of jobseekers off the balance sheet. I grew up in that context in Knowsley, a local authority area that had been drawn up a decade earlier in such a way as to exclude all sixth-form provision. This was an area that was being written off. I was a poorly qualified, unskilled lad in his late teens, living in a town with few opportunities, and suffering with my mental health because I could not see a way out.

By way of contrast, these days my city region is benefiting from the award-winning Cradle to Career scheme, which provides holistic mental health and wellbeing support and focuses on the underlying causes of youth crime and antisocial behaviour. Just as important as the metrics of success that make the headlines in the press are the testimonies of the people whose lives have been turned around.

To return to my broader point, many of the approaches that I have described echo the work done in recent years on fundamentally rethinking employment support. That work has made a compelling case for a more wraparound employment service that links employment with skills, health, housing and local economic conditions, and gives frontline staff the flexibility to respond to individual circumstances.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) said, we have seen that in things such as JobsPlus, which has demonstrated that embedding employment support directly in social housing communities can reach people who have been economically inactive for years. Early evidence shows people do not just move into work, but gain improvements in their confidence, wellbeing, readiness and resilience—the things that actually make employment sustainable for people.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very sincere speech, and I am listening to it with great interest. He talks about youngsters’ confidence. One of the great industries that was run down during the Conservatives’ years of rule was the nuclear industry, but I believe it will be great again one day. Dounreay in my constituency still has an apprenticeship scheme, which gives youngsters great confidence. I hope it will be carbon copied by many industries as we revive the fortunes of what we are good at in this country.

[Patrick Hurley]

That pinpoints exactly why place-based schemes are so important. What is useful and necessary for my part of the country will not be useful elsewhere. That difference can have a positive impact on local people’s lives.

I have talked about the good things that JobsPlus can do, but despite that evidence, too many of the programmes that I have mentioned today exist in a state of uncertainty. Short-term funding and delayed decisions are forcing providers to plan for winding down even when their outcomes are improving. That is not a sensible way to run employment policy, and we risk losing exactly the sort of expertise and relationships that we should be encouraging and building on.

If we are serious about increasing employment and tackling inactivity, we also need to be serious about how the support that is needed is delivered. Central systems have their place, but they cannot do everything; we also need long-term backing for place-based approaches and proper partnership with community organisations. Collectively, we need the confidence to move away from one-size-fits-all solutions.

More than 9 million working-age people in the UK are economically inactive, and long-term sickness is the single largest driver of inactivity among 16 to 64-year-olds. In Southport and across the country, organisations such as The Big Onion and Transform Lives Company, and schemes such as Cradle to Career, are already doing the work that we say we want to see. The question is whether national policy is willing to learn from them and support them properly.

Welfare Spending

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for reminding me of two of my predecessors. I cannot claim to have known the former, but I did know Frank Field very well. Frank and I talked many times, particularly with regard to Birkenhead, about his belief in the value of work. He wanted to see our shipyard thrive and young people in Birkenhead grow up with the pride of employment. I like to think that when the Prime Minister came to Cammell Laird shipyard recently to talk about the value of good work in Birkenhead, Frank would have felt very proud.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will continue for just a moment.

All the young people who spoke to the commissioner could not have been clearer about the challenge of learning in overcrowded bedrooms. They were clear and direct about the shame of not always being able to keep clean because of a lack of hot water. I am deeply proud that we have committed funding for social housing to get children out of temporary accommodation, and expanded the warm home discount for all those on universal credit who are eligible. To ensure that the next generation of families experience a friendly face and have a place to play, we have expanded Best Start family hubs to every local authority.

As I said earlier, those are just some of the changes being brought about thanks to the child poverty taskforce chaired by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and for Education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

I have given way a lot, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am worried that you will be quite cross with me if I keep giving way, so I will make progress.

[Jamie Stone]

rose—

[Alison McGovern]

I did say that I would give way to the hon. Gentleman, so let me do so before I finish my speech.

[Jamie Stone]

The Minister is extraordinarily gracious. She has rightly talked about universal credit, and what she says is very interesting indeed. I have constituents on legacy benefits who are—I think this is the right word—“migrating” to universal credit. The trouble is that they have to wait five weeks until they get their first cash. How will they make ends meet? What about the direct debits? I worry about that. Perhaps the wonderful group of Ministers considering these matters could look at that situation, because people are really caught in a trap.

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman is not the only person who worries about it, and I will receive his intervention as a submission to the child poverty taskforce.

The child poverty taskforce is looking at all the levers we can pull—across income, costs, debt and local support—to prevent poverty, including social security reform. Our universal credit review is considering ways that the system can improve in order to stabilise family finances and provide roots into good work.

On the two-child limit specifically, the consequences of the Conservative choices made over the past decade and a half are clear for all to see. We have rightly said many times that we will not commit to any policy without knowing how we will pay for it. Taxpayers in this country—who include many parents, grandparents and those who care deeply about the fortunes of the next generation—have the right to know that they have a Government who will help grow our country and our economy. Poverty creates stony ground for that growth. It robs people of the dignity of being able to look after themselves and the choices about how to live their own lives. It robs children of what should be a worry-free time and makes them less able to take risks and try new things as they grow up.

This makes bad beginnings for a country that needs its next generation to be innovators, to be inventors and to build our future. I say this as one of three in a family with hard-working parents where money was tight. We knew every day in those years when I was growing up that the Tory Government at the helm did not give a stuff about people like us—we knew that every single day. Families in this country who are struggling should know that this Labour Government think about them every day. We have taken action to improve life for our kids, and we will keep fighting for that every single day.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Jamie Stone Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

That is the nub of why there is so much concern that has been consistently raised by all Members on the Conversative Benches, and many on the Government Benches as well, who, dare I say, are considering how they will vote later.

No one doubts that our welfare system, which is set to exceed £100 billion by 2030, needs reform. If we continue to follow the Chancellor’s strategy of recklessly borrowing, which will have the same negative implications on PIP, some of the poorest in society who feel the biggest impact of any financial crisis will be exposed.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thus far, I have kept out of this debate, probably for the wrong reason, but my wife has been disabled for 26 years and is in receipt of PIP. Although I became an MP in 2017, as a family, we were deeply grateful for the support. My wife is an honest lady—I hope I do not embarrass her by saying that—and she would have been delighted to have been consulted about PIP, as set out by the hon. Member for Lewisham North (Vicky Foxcroft). She would have put her thoughts down on paper, and I am sure that many recipients of PIP would have said, “Yes, we will try to see if we can help to get the budget straight in some way.” That way, the Government would take people with them; that is important and we are missing that.

[Robbie Moore]

Trust is at the heart of the issue, and if we want to create a system that commands public trust, this is not the way to do it. We need to reward effort and promote self-reliance, but the Bill creates a two-tier system detached from individual responsibility. We need to make the welfare system more targeted, but the Bill, like many Government policies, simply shifts new costs on to people who will genuinely be ill, newly disabled or simply younger and does little to target those relying on the state.

Agricultural Property Relief

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ann Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I am coming on to solutions in a minute; I hope that the Minister will listen to my proposed options.

Extending the existing scope of APR to land managed under environmental agreements with or on behalf of, for example, the Government or public bodies also suggests that foundations and large companies could buy up land sold to pay inheritance tax, without being subject to it in the same way. We have a train of people in west Wales who are already buying land for planting trees, carbon offsetting and solar and wind farms.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I find the notion of people buying and selling land purely for fiscal purposes abhorrent. I come from a farming family. My father was broke. He had to sell most of the land. There is not a day that goes by in which I do not look at the fields and regret that my family parted with it. The point I am making is that there is an emotional attachment between the farming family and the land. That is quite different from buying or selling a house, shares or a holiday home in Spain—it is quite different.

[Ann Davies]

As someone who has lived and worked the land all my life, I totally agree with the hon. Member. It is something that is within our soul; it is not just a trading issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) for bringing forward this debate. She is a real advocate for farmers, and her constituents will have noted that.

As has been said, farming is not just a job, but a way of life. It is a generational commitment. In rural Northern Ireland, including in my constituency of Upper Bann, despite the recent inclement weather, rising production costs and the very real concerns of avian flu, bluetongue and the affliction of tuberculosis, our farmers continue to toil away. As we stand here today, they are milking cows and feeding livestock. They are working the land and ultimately feeding the nation. Farmers take great pride in their work, with zero days off and low incomes, and they bear the immense responsibility of being the custodians of our countryside and the lifeblood of our rural communities. Schools, businesses and essential services depend on them.

[Jamie Stone]

I sincerely hope that I am wrong in what I am about to suggest, but if the value of land were to drop as a result of these measures, and a farm had borrowed heavily and owed the bank a lot, it could be the case that the bank would foreclose and force the sale of the farm.

[Carla Lockhart]

The hon. Member is not wrong—he is rarely wrong. That the policy could lead to the splitting up of family farms is a concern for many farming families across Northern Ireland and this United Kingdom.

Agriculture has long been and continues to be the backbone of the UK economy. The agrifood sector contributes significantly to our GDP and employs hundreds of thousands of people across the country, yet, despite their crucial contribution, farmers face ever-increasing pressures that are not of their making.

Farming is deeply personal for me: I was raised on a farm, I am the daughter of a farmer, I am the wife of a farmer and, as I have said in this place before, I am the proud mum of a little boy who aspires to be a family farmer. He also dreams of being a professional footballer, but we will talk about that another day. So when I speak of farming, it really cuts deep, and it is from my heart that I bring the Government the simple but urgent message that they continue down this path at their peril. The proposed tax changes are a heavy blow to those who are already struggling, and they will be a wrecking ball to our rural communities and rural way of life across this United Kingdom. They will undermine our food security, drive up prices and undermine the world-class environmental standards that British farmers adhere to day and daily.

The changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief fly in the face of the manifesto commitments of this Government. Prior to the general election, the Prime Minister told farmers what they wanted to hear. It feels very much like “you’ve threw them under the bus,” as we would say in Northern Ireland, for little monetary return for the Government coffers. He said:

“Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back…You deserve better than that.”

Those words came from the Prime Minister’s mouth, and they ring very hollow in our rural community.

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland has done a deep dive into the figures, which clearly outline the significant and disproportionate impact that the changes will have on Northern Ireland’s agricultural sector. DAERA’s analysis has shown that the vast majority of farms will be affected. In fact, under the current land valuation of £21,000 per acre in Northern Ireland, approximately 40% to 45% of cattle and sheep farms will be impacted, and an astounding 87% of dairy farms will be caught by the tax. It is not a marginal impact; it will affect almost half of farms in Northern Ireland, which together account for 80% of the total agricultural land, 70% of beef cattle, 90% of dairy cows and 80% of all cattle. The proposed changes will disrupt the very heart of our agricultural output. Sadly, that situation is replicated across the whole of the UK.

Despite all the evidence and concerns, the UK Government continue to state that only 500 farmers will be impacted by the changes. The official figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility remain highly uncertain. In fact, the OBR itself acknowledged that the estimates are among the most uncertain in the entire Budget package. According to independent analysis, the true number of affected farmers is likely to be five times greater than the Government’s estimate. I have made this point repeatedly in this place: no farmers, no food.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. With those wise words, she has hit the nail on the head. When the Minister looks round this Chamber, he will see that everybody—those who have spoken and those who are here—is united against the change to APR. We are not going to put the Minister under pressure unduly, but if it were me, I would think twice about getting into a fight where it was 27 to one.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Member will be aware that my wife’s family come from Northern Ireland. My understanding is that the price of land there is quite a lot higher per acre than in Scotland or England. Does that not mean that what we are talking about today has a disproportionate effect on the Province of Northern Ireland?

[Jim Shannon]

It certainly does. For the Minister, we will lay on the line what we are after. The £1 million threshold is wrong, because it does not adequately reflect the rateable value of a farm. If the threshold was £5 million, that would save the small farms. The hon. Member for Caerfyrddin, who introduced the debate, talked about solutions. I have a solution for the Labour party, and I do not care if the Labour party claims it—that does not matter to me. What matters to me is that the threshold should rise from £1 million to £5 million. If it does, family farms will be saved, and if they are saved, we have a chance of moving forward.

I am trying to put that forward to the Minister as a positive solution. With the Ulster Farmers Union representatives William Irvine and Alex Kinnear, I had a meeting with the Minister away back before Christmas. We put that solution to him, and he said that he would take it to the Chancellor, because ultimately it will be her decision. It is a really clear way forward.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) is right in what he says about Northern Ireland. Land values are more expensive in Northern Ireland than anywhere else, which is why the 70% figure is greater for Northern Ireland than anywhere else. We want to have the same mechanism for everybody across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but there are other ideas about mechanisms such as extended payment windows or graduated tax liabilities to alleviate the financial strain on small farms.

I urge the Minister to provide clarity and reassurance to farmers, who are deeply concerned about the future. Again, I say this to him: if we want to do something positive following this debate—as I think we can and must—the issue of the threshold is the way forward. When people add up the value of the land, the value of the machinery and the value of the stock, they are well over the £1 million threshold, but what if he made the threshold £5 million? I have not grasped that figure out of the air; the Ulster Farmers Union and the National Farmers Union put it forward as a figure that could address the issue.

I am not going to put a lot of pressure on the Minister today—well, actually, I am. We are all putting pressure on him, because we see a way forward—genuinely, constructively and positively. I beseech him to take that message from the debate today to increase the threshold and save family farms.

This is an issue across Northern Ireland, including in the constituencies that my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and I represent. All my neighbours are worried sick about what the future holds, as are those tenant farmers in Wales and Scotland—across this great United Kingdom. We need the threshold to be raised. If the Minister does that, we will be on his side.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes]

I do agree, and the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that I shall be speaking later in my remarks about the ombudsman’s report and findings, which will bring me to the constitutional matter I raised about the nature of accountability and scrutiny and how Governments are held to account, and whether ombudsmen are meaningful at all if their conclusions are entirely disregarded. He is right to raise that issue.

I want briefly to describe the events that provoked me to challenge the previous Government on this issue when my party held the reins of power. I am not a recent convert to this cause; I made the same argument then—that we needed to recognise the justice of this campaign and act accordingly—but I did so knowing the events that have occurred.

I will not go over things laboriously—because you would not want me to, Dr Murrison, given the number of Members who want to speak in this debate—but essentially, when pension ages were equalised, which was the result of two Acts of Parliament, the notice given to the people affected was inadequate.

I am not an unbridled advocate of the case that every woman who thought that they were going to retire at 60, and then found that they would have to retire at 65, should be compensated. If a woman was young or middle-aged when that happened, there is a fair case that they had time to adjust—they could re-prepare; they could make different plans.

However, if a woman was born in the 1950s and had anticipated retiring in two, three or four years’ time but then had to work up to five years’ longer, it is a very different matter, because many of those women, anticipating their retirement, had prepared for exactly that eventuality. Many of those women, of course, were no longer working. They had ended work to look after elderly parents; they were playing a caring role; or their skills were no longer relevant to the workplace, because they had taken time out of work, first to have children and then, as I have said, to embark on other social responsibilities. These were women who worked hard and had done the right thing, and they are not all, as they are sometimes characterised by their critics, drawn from the liberal bourgeoisie—who, as you know, Dr Murrison, I generally speaking despise.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

Having said that, I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman. [Laughter.]

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The words “liberal bourgeoisie” made me think. I represent the mainland constituency that is furthest away from Westminster, and I will just point out that this issue affects women from all over the UK, be they “liberal bourgeoisie” or not. In my constituency—that far away—370 people have signed the petition. This issue is huge all over the UK.

[Sir John Hayes]

I meant no slight on the hon. Gentleman. He is right: it does affect women across the whole of the kingdom—and of course, he is much posher than bourgeois, so he could not be slighted by my remark.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

4. What steps she is taking to increase uptake of pension credit in winter 2024-25.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to help increase uptake of pension credit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds]

We have seen a 152% increase in pension credit claims since late July, with over 74,000 pension credit claims up to mid-September. We know that many local authorities and, indeed, Members of this House—including me last Thursday—are helping pensioners on low incomes to ascertain whether they are due pension credit.

[Jamie Stone]

There will be people who are eligible for pension credit living in very remote areas, where connectivity is less than great. It is an appalling thought that they might miss out on what they are due. May I suggest to the Department that the way to reach out to those people might be through a database, followed by a mailshot?

[Emma Reynolds]

In addition to merging housing benefit and pension credit, which will help some of the people whom the hon. Gentleman has in mind, the Secretary of State and I have asked the Department to look at what can be done to make the application form simpler. The Department will report back to us by the end of the month, and we will update the House in due course.

Carer’s Allowance

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I will be brief. I support the motion and everything that has been said today, and I look forward to the Government’s response.

As many people know—including perhaps you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am an unpaid carer for my wife Flora. With the salary that I receive as an MP, I can afford to do that. I care for my wife because I love her. She has been disabled for 25 years. I will talk about one aspect of the support that we get. When I am here in Westminster, a wonderful team of professional carers go and see my wife every morning, look after her and see what needs to be done. They are fantastic people, and I owe them such a big debt.

This is where I might try the patience of the House slightly, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I want to mention an aspect that is not helping those carers: the remuneration that they receive for mileage. In Scotland, carers get 61p per mile for the first 3,500 miles, and after 3,500 miles, they get 25p per mile. That is not good news given the vastness of my constituency—half the size of Wales, they tell me—and the mileage that carers have to cover. A lot of those wonderful people are saying, “Enough is enough,” packing up and calling it a day. In north-west Sutherland and Wester Ross in particular, we have an ageing population that desperately needs that kind of support, but carers are just giving up and going. It is not because they do not care for the people they are helping, but because they simply cannot afford it. The cost of running their cars is far greater than what they receive for the vast mileages involved.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

My husband is a full-time carer for his mother, who has had three strokes. By looking after people in their homes and saving lives long term, carers make very large savings for the NHS. Given how much carers save the NHS in long-term out-of-hospital care provision, we should, as a cross-party endeavour, reconsider the compensation for mileage.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Lady makes a very wise point that demonstrates the interconnected nature of unpaid carers and professional carers, because the best solutions come when they work together.

I will conclude with this: we have a problem. It is perhaps not pertinent to the Minister who is before us today, but I hope that the Treasury will consider the issue of remuneration rates for mileages, perhaps with the Scottish Government. Those rates have not been revisited since 2011, and since then, we have had about 40% inflation. We can see what is wrong; let us sort the problem.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I would ask people to go to their jobcentre, which can help them build their CV and their confidence. We have 50PLUS champions across all districts, and midlife MOTs. I for one think that working in my 50s—and now my 60s—is a very good idea indeed.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The two wellbeing hubs in my constituency, in Brora and Dunbeath, are crucial to the wellbeing of pensioners. They signpost the best mix of benefits and are a last safety net, but their future is uncertain because of the vagaries of NHS Scotland finance. Will a Minister meet me to discuss how we can safeguard the future of these two centres?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

I pay full credit to Mrs Ward and also to my hon. Friend. I read with interest the Stoke Sentinel report on this particular issue. There is a genuine change to be made, there has been a long-standing campaign, and all parties should be pleased with the outcome reached.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

In all honesty, I probably ought to declare an interest, but pensioners living in Edinburgh and Glasgow do not face the same sorts of increases as pensioners living in a remote and faraway constituency such as mine when it comes to living costs such as running a car, buying groceries and heating the house. Will the Government look at ways of targeting these particularly hard-hit people?

[Mel Stride]

We of course look at particularly targeting harder-hit pensioners through pension credit, and the Pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), has done a huge amount to promote that. But we are always open to receiving further ideas and having discussions, and if the hon. Gentleman would like to come forward with further ideas, we will certainly look at them.