Pensions Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure and privilege to follow my noble friend Lord German on DWP matters, where his own knowledge shames my ignorance but reassures me that the Government’s position is being knowledgeably defended.

When we debate subjects other than specific legislation, there is a happy convention that we congratulate the noble Lord who has secured the debate on having done so, and we can normally find it in us to congratulate him or her on the manner in which he or she has opened the debate and developed the underlying issues. We then speak to a time limit that is rationed by the time available for the debate. The latter does not apply to Second Reading, where we receive polite advice, on some occasions, from the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms as to how long individual Back-Benchers can speak, if they are as anxious as the rest of your Lordships’ House to conclude the debate by 10 pm. Ironically, the more speakers, the more likely it is that some individual speakers will exceed the ration suggested by the Chief Whip. Today, this privation does not apply and, perhaps equally ironically, I propose to make a very short speech.

As to the absence of the normal advance congratulations to the Minister opening the debate, I find myself in the position of congratulating my noble friend not only on having secured the debate but on his substance. He has of course secured it through his and his DWP colleagues’ persuasive logic in L Committee and I join your Lordships’ House in its commendation of the Pensions Minister himself.

I am not myself competent to take up the challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, to make pensions interesting, but I entirely welcome her challenge to your Lordships’ House at large. In the note from our Library on the Bill, I was struck by the reasoned explanation of how British state pension legislation had evolved over the past century since our noble friends the Liberal Democrats initiated this provision in their pre-World War I legislation. I am perhaps one of the rare Members of your Lordships’ House who can truthfully say that, as in the old saw, Lloyd George knew my father, as my noble kinsman arrived in the House of Commons at the first by-election after Munich.

The Library note goes on to describe the state of the state pension in 1945 when World War II ended. It goes beyond that to say that much of the relevant legislation since then has been attaching legislative barnacles to the good ship “Provision for Old Age”. When I say that I congratulate my noble friend on the substance of the Bill, I am congratulating him and his department not only on riding the two bareback horses of welfare reform and pension revision at the same time, but on the extent to which the pension revision in the Bill improves the hull of the good ship “Provision for Old Age”—to the extent that the Official Opposition in the other place, echoed today by the noble Baroness on the opposition Front Bench, have felt able to launch it in our House with their support, whatever continuing gaps they have identified.

I ask my noble friend, in his wind-up speech, not to omit to acknowledge what gaps still need attention. Ideally, he should identify how he thinks they should be tackled and refined, even if it may be in the next Parliament. If he can do that with candour, and avoid some of the things that have gone wrong since 1945, a grandchild of mine, especially if he or she reaches either House of this Parliament, may be able to follow the Lloyd George saw with his or her own version: “Lord Freud knew my grandpa”; and, in yet another place, I shall smile quietly.