Lord Harper
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend and I agree with everything that she says. I will just add to what she said at the end: low pay and insecurity at work are detrimental to growth, and obviously we need growth in our economy to pay for the benefits that we want to pay to pensioners and others. Once again, the party opposite calls for the growth but they are not willing to support the policies that get us there.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, when the Chancellor was doing her various media interviews setting out the retreat on this policy, she rather unbelievably tried to suggest that it was done not because it was incredibly unpopular but because somehow the economy has got rather better since last year. Given that we have seen inflation up, unemployment up and the OBR slashing its growth forecast, the Minister should get some personal credit for not trying to insist on that nonsense in your Lordships’ House. When the Treasury analyses the cost of both the original policy and its reversal and takes into account the extra people claiming pension credit and the cost of reversing this policy, can he set out, either today or at the fiscal event, whether this whole set of decisions has saved or cost the taxpayer money?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. On the facts about growth, we inherited forecasts from the previous Government for 2025 growth where we would have been seventh out of seven in the G7. In quarter 1 of this year we were first out of seven in the G7, so we will not take any lectures from him about the growth performance of the economy. He asked about the costings of the policy. The costings of the previous policy included assumptions about take-up of pension credit, so that pension credit increase figure was already in the costings for the previous policy. The costings of this policy will be certified by the OBR and scored at the Autumn Budget, and we will set out what he asks for.