Pension Review: Phase 2
Debate between Lord Sikka and Baroness Sherlock(6 days ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his kind words. I am very grateful; it is very gracious of him. He is asking me to comment on speculation about something that might be recommended in the phase 2 review, which has not started yet, so I hope he will bear with me. We think that getting this the right way around really matters. Phase 1 is about trying to get the market working as well as it should, both the DC side and the consultation on the Local Government Pension Scheme. If we can get the market functioning well and drive more scale and consolidation, looking at what they are doing in Canada and Australia, we can then have a better-functioning market and better returns. At that point in stage 2, we can look at matters of adequacy and at what money is going into it.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, we live in a country where 50% of the population own less than 5% of wealth and the poorest 10% own just 0.02%. What plans do the Government have to improve the share of wealth of a substantial part of the population to enable them to save for a private pension? Surely such things cannot be left to the market.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I think that might be slightly above my pay grade. The Government want to make sure that everybody can save an appropriate amount for retirement. For that to work, one of the starting points is that people have to earn enough in their working lives to be able to have an option of saving anything. The measures that the Government have taken, in our plans for jobs and in looking at what we are doing with the national living wage and to try to drive good work, are about trying to drive economic growth, get more people into good jobs and help them to stay there and to grow in their careers. The work has been done around the Get Britain Working White Paper. All the plans around that are trying to get people to develop in their working life and to be more productive to drive economic growth. That is a win-win. It is good for the country and good for individuals and their families.
“Get Britain Working” White Paper
Debate between Lord Sikka and Baroness Sherlock(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend knows that the way to my heart is to mention County Durham. I should probably declare an interest, although it is so old that it is not an interest. Once upon a time I contracted with the then DWP to run employment programmes for single parents. That was about 100 years ago, so it is probably too old to be there now.
In response to my noble friend’s question, he is absolutely right that it is very hard for small voluntary organisations to bid for national contracts, yet they can often reach people that central government will never be able to. We have heard examples from around the House today. One of my hopes is that the more we can localise things, the easier it will be to involve a range of partners from an area, and people will know who the good players in their area are. Furthermore, the issues are different in different areas; as the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, explained, some areas may have a large Muslim or Bangladeshi community, and in other areas there may be large numbers of young people and single parents. Under this system, each area will have a better sense of what its problems are and which partners can be worked with. The aim of the trailblazer areas is to see what difference that system can make.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I have received a message from a person in Birmingham with 20 years’ engineering experience who has been unemployed and is now a zero-hours contract worker. He says that engineering has been decimated by high energy costs and that our energy costs are more than double those of the French and four times those of the Chinese. When are the Government going to control energy costs and save skilled jobs? Over to you, Minister.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I never like to say that something is outside my range but sometimes it really is. The Government have a very clear strategy on green energy and building green jobs, and on building pathways to secure British energy. The creation of Great British Energy and the strategies around it will all make a difference. I am afraid that is the limit of my knowledge.
Women’s State Pension Age: PHSO Report
Debate between Lord Sikka and Baroness Sherlock(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Sikka
To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the report Women’s State Pension age: our findings on injustice and associated issues, published by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman on 21 March, how much compensation they plan to pay to affected women, or to the families of affected women who have died; and on what timescale.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, the issues outlined in the ombudsman’s report are significant and complex. As such, they require serious deliberation, and we need time to review and consider the report alongside the evidence and the views expressed. As part of that work, the Government recently met WASPI representatives to hear their experiences directly. Once we have undertaken that work, the Government will be able to outline their approach.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, paragraph 19 of the parliamentary ombudsman’s report clearly states that
“complainants have suffered injustice as a result of maladministration”,
and the report recommends compensation. Thousands of women have died while awaiting compensation, but all that successive Ministers have done is kick the can down the road, saying, “We are still consulting”. There has already been an inquiry. Can the Minister specify the date by which this injustice will actually be addressed and compensation paid? In addition, will she agree to meet another delegation of the affected women?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, we understand the human impact felt behind the issues raised in this report. Retirement is a significant milestone that should, one hopes, be greeted with excitement rather than surprise. But I say to my noble friend that I do not think this Government could be accused of kicking the can down the road; the ombudsman published its report in March, we became the Government only in July and it is now October. Although I fully understand that he would like me to articulate a response here, I am sorry that I am not able to do so. However, I assure him that the Minister for Pensions met WASPI representatives recently—the first Minister to do that since 2016.
Child Poverty: Benefit Cap
Debate between Lord Sikka and Baroness Sherlock(2 months ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point. I am very conscious that teachers are on the front line of this and that they see the day-to-day effects of the significant rise in child poverty we have seen in recent years. They are very much people who have things to say to us. That is why the strategy is being co-chaired by my boss, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and my noble friend’s boss, the Secretary of State for Education. Child poverty is not restricted to a single aspect of anyone’s life. It has many different causes and many different solutions. We will work across government, as a joined-up Government, to tackle this properly.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have indicated the financial cost of abolishing the two-child benefit cap. Can the Minister indicate the social cost of keeping 4.3 million children in poverty?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I will be nerdy for a moment. We inherited two different policies. One is the two-child limit, which limits the benefits paid to any family to the first two children, except in certain circumstances; the second is the benefit cap we are talking about here, which limits the total amount that can be given to any family. I apologise—nerdiness over. One of the reasons this matters is that those problems have different solutions. One of the reasons we are having a child poverty strategy is that the different policies we inherited, the state of the social security system and the series of piecemeal changes all combine with rises in the cost of living, problems in social housing, problems with energy and problems across our society to produce the effects my noble friend is describing. That is why they have to be tackled together.