Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, it is good to follow such an eloquent and powerful plea by my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. He has in fact invited me to go to Uxbridge since I recently pointed out some of the failings of its eateries. I also thank the Minister for her eloquent and helpful introduction, and join in the congratulations to the maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart—with whom I fenced on occasions on the issue of Europe, but I am glad now that it was not real fencing—and the noble Lord, Lord Field, who like me is a ’79er, having entered the House of Commons in 1979. It is great to see him now here in the Lords. Both made excellent maiden speeches. I also declare an interest, not on this occasion as a former chair of Age Scotland but as a recipient of the retirement pension—I think others here might have a similar interest in that as well.

For once, I wholeheartedly support what the Government are doing. Some people have been a bit equivocal about it, but I am not in any way. In fact, I was very disappointed that the House of Lords Committee on Intergenerational Fairness recommended getting rid of the triple lock. I think it was a terrible mistake, and I have expressed my concern to the four Labour members of the committee, and indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross—who like me used to work for Age Concern—for making that recommendation. I do not know about the noble Baroness, but I actually declare my pension in my income tax return, along with my occupational pension, and pay tax on it, so there is a clawback on that. But basic pensioners, who rely on the state pension, are those we are concerned about.

When one looks at the situation for the United Kingdom, one finds that we are the worst of the developed countries in the OECD. The OECD average pension is 63% of average earnings; in the European Union, it is 71%; in the Netherlands, it is 101% of average earnings, but in the United Kingdom, it is 29%. The triple lock has edged it up over a period, but it is still very low as far as the European comparisons are concerned.

I understand that people are concerned about children in poverty; I have heard that from my noble friend Lady Lister and others. Of course there is a huge problem there, but is it not wrong to penalise the already poor by taking money away from them, only to give it to those who are even poorer? The poor will get poorer. I do not disagree with all the requests to consider uprating other benefits, so what do we do? How do we pay for it?

During the pandemic, the poor have been getting poorer, while UK billionaires have seen their personal wealth rise by £25 billion. Hedge funds have done well; Jacob Rees-Mogg will tell you that. Some shares have gone up; people have made a killing there. The personal wealth of the UK’s top earner, Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos, is between £18 billion to £20 billion, but what has he done? He has moved to Monaco so that he can avoid paying tax. These billionaires have a responsibility, and it is about time that we pinpoint that and say it even more loudly.

Philip Green and his wife Tina have a yacht in Monaco. Again, they are avoiding tax. Their company is registered in the tax haven of Jersey so they can avoid paying a fair share of tax. They have a £100 million yacht on which they can sip champagne with Jim Ratcliffe, because he has gone out there now as well. Jim Ratcliffe can admire the birthday present that Tina bought Philip: a pure-gold Monopoly set. On that Monopoly set are the premises that Philip Green owns. This is conspicuous consumption gone absolutely mad.

Let us think about that. Let us think about taxing people who can afford to pay tax, and not take away from the little bit more that pensioners are getting, slowly but surely taking them towards the European average.

Finally, I have a few questions for the Minister about the Bill, which, as I say, I support unequivocally. The briefing says that the pension will be “potentially increased”. Can she make it absolutely clear that that potential will become a reality? I assume that it will, because otherwise why put it into the Bill? However, it would be nice just to have that confirmed.

The triple lock, as others have said, is based on the rate of inflation, the rate of earnings, or 2.5%—whichever is the highest. Can we assume that the increase will therefore be at least 2.5%? Again, some people have assumed that in their speeches, and it would be helpful if the Minister confirmed that.

I am really pleased that the Conservative Government have done this. The Labour Government did it in the early 2000s, with the economic problems that we had then. I hope that we will do a lot more in relation to the take-up of pension credit. I was going to raise that point again, as others have raised it. However, as the Minister knows, I have a Parliamentary Question coming up specifically on the take-up of pension credit, so I will leave that for now and ask her a few questions on that occasion. Meanwhile, I give her my unequivocal support on this rare occasion.