Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Nearly 1 million pensioners are not receiving pension credit to which they are entitled. To make matters worse, each of those 1 million pensioners is also missing out on a £900 payment from the Government to help them with heating, as the payment is available only to those on pension credit. Why have the Government been so ineffective at raising the take-up of pension credit? Will she also explain why on earth they linked help with heating to pension credit when they knew that 1 million pensioners would miss out as a result?

[Laura Trott]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s interest in pension credit. I hope he will have heard my previous answer about all we are doing to boost take-up and indeed the success that we had before Christmas. I have spoken to him previously about the work we are doing to automate it and make greater use of data; this is an absolute priority for me and for this Government.

Pensions Dashboards (Prohibition of Indemnification) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 20th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) on her work on the Bill. I thank hon. Members across the House who have contributed to our debates during its passage.

This is an important Bill. People who work hard and save all their lives should have every right to expect a decent pension in their retirement. The Bill will play an important role in helping to protect the interests of people who are saving for a pension, as we have heard. The Opposition agree with the principle that pension scheme trustees should be responsible if they fail to meet their legal requirements, rather than responsibility falling on people who are saving for a pension.

Without the provisions in the Bill, there is a real risk that fines could fall on scheme members. That problem was highlighted recently by the Pensions Regulator—I take note of the concerns that the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) raised about regulators—which warned that many trustees are at risk of failing to meet their legal pensions dashboard responsibilities. There is a very real risk that fines could be issued as a result. The regulator has made it clear that it will take a dim view of trustees who fail to prioritise their pensions dashboard responsibilities.

People saving for a pension should not be let down by the actions of fund managers and trustees. That is why the Opposition support this important Bill. Indeed, we would have liked the Government to take action earlier; we would have liked Ministers to include the Bill’s provisions in the original dashboard legislation. I wish the hon. Member for Cheadle every success with her Bill, but it would be very helpful if the Minister explained whether the omission of those measures from the original legislation was a mistake or whether there was an element of deliberate policy. I look forward to the Minister addressing that point.

Pensions policy is a long-term issue and a very important one. Legislation introduced in this Parliament and the last Parliament will have implications for many years to come. The dashboard is an important attempt to make information more easily accessible to pension scheme members. I welcome it—I think it will play an important role in explaining pensions, as we have heard from colleagues across the House, and in helping to encourage people to save more for their retirement—but the Government cannot rely on the dashboard alone to address all the issues in the UK pensions system. I believe that Ministers should be doing more both to encourage saving and to support pensioners at this difficult time. We must all do more in this country to ensure that people are saving enough for their retirement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Laura Trott)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for promoting the Bill and I congratulate her on navigating it through to this stage. I have done a private Member’s Bill so I know that that is no mean feat. It requires a huge amount of work, which has been on display today, as have her skills in getting this through. I also thank the Opposition for their support for the Bill, and I thank all of those who have spoken today: my hon. Friends the Members for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), for Watford (Dean Russell), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Wantage (David Johnston) and for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). I will endeavour to deal with as many of his questions as I can, but I will write to him on any I am unable to address. I also pay tribute to my predecessors in this role, my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who spoke in support of the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee respectively. I am proud to complete the trio.

Private pensions have undergone a quiet revolution in recent decades. It used to be the case that retirement income was guaranteed by the employer via a defined benefit pension. That started to change with the introduction of defined contribution schemes in the early 1990s. Those types of schemes put the risk of the eventual outcome entirely at the feet of the employees, with no guaranteed contribution from employers. That clearly has a huge potential impact on the adequacy of someone’s private pension for retirement, and introduced a huge new complex financial world for individuals to navigate. The intergenerational impact of this is stark. One group of people is able to retire on a guaranteed pension provided by their employer and have protections—provided by the financial assistance scheme and, latterly, the Pension Protection Fund— in respect of the employer going bust. The second group of people are given no guarantees on the value of their pension, if indeed they have one at all, and they are exposed to market conditions, are reliant on the performance of their individual fund, and wildly different levels of contribution are made by the employer—in some cases, none are made at all.

That is why the introduction of automatic enrolment in 2012 was so important. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle is right to say that automatic enrolment has been an incredible success and has achieved a transformational effect on retirement savings in the UK, both by employers and by employees. It has seen millions more people working to contribute to their workplace pension and has normalised workplace pension saving. Automatic enrolment is re-establishing a culture of retirement saving for a new generation, with more than 10.8 million workers enrolled into a workplace pension to date and an additional £33 billion more saved in real terms in 2021 than in 2012.

[Matt Rodda]

Will the Minister pay tribute to the work of the Pensions Commission and, indeed, the last Labour Government, who designed the policy? Obviously, it was implemented in 2012.

[Laura Trott]

The Pensions Commission did a great piece of work. As the shadow Minister rightly pointed out, it was implemented by the Conservatives.

Automatic enrolment was designed specifically to help groups who have historically been less likely to save, such as women and lower earners. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon referred to women, and automatic enrolment has particularly helped them; millions more have been saving into a pension for the first time. Workplace pension participation among eligible women working in the private sector has risen from 40% in 2012 to a brilliant 87% in 2021—that is the same level as for eligible men in the private sector. We absolutely know that there is more to do, particularly to enable young adults, lower earners and part-time workers to achieve greater security in later life. The 2017 review of automatic enrolment sets out the Government’s ambition to enable people to save more and to start saving earlier by abolishing the lower earnings limit and reducing the qualifying age for automatic enrolment to 18. We are committed to implementing these measures in the mid-2020s.

However, the success of automatic enrolment in increasing the number of pension savings and the number of pension pots people have comes with policy problems that we have to solve. People have an average of 11 jobs in their lifetime. With automatic enrolment, they will often have a new pension pot every time they move job. Research in 2021 suggested that 73% of people have multiple pension pots, and research by Scottish Widows suggests that almost half of workplace pension holders do not know how many pension pots they hold with previous employers. Indeed, they will frequently forget about their pension pots from previous employers altogether.

The first policy issue with automatic enrolment that we therefore need to address is ensuring that pots are reunited with people. While estimates and definitions of lost pension pots vary, the latest survey from the Pensions Policy Institute suggests that the value of lost pots in the UK may have grown from £19.4 billion in 2018 to £26.6 billion in 2022.

The second issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle alluded to is that many people have multiple pension pots, and it can be difficult for people to keep track of what they have saved for retirement. Having lots of pension pots can be confusing. The Financial Conduct Authority’s recent survey showed that 54% of defined contribution pension holders aged 45 to 64 say they have little or no idea of how much annual income they expect to have from their defined benefit contributions.

Members will be pleased to know that we have a solution to these issues: pensions dashboards. Dashboards will allow individuals to view information about their multiple pensions, including their state pension, in one place, online—even pots they had forgotten they had in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford said, it will tell us what our future looks like.

Numerous Members asked about timings. The Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022, which set out the requirements for relevant occupational pension schemes to be connected to the pensions dashboards digital system, were approved by the House in November 2022 with cross-party support, and they have now come into force. We hope to see the first schemes connecting to the dashboards infrastructure in the coming months.

Members also asked when individuals will be able to access these dashboards. We refer to this as the dashboards available point. As set out in the Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022, the dashboards available point will be when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is satisfied that the dashboards are ready to support widespread use by the general public. The Government consulted last year, and in response to the consultation we set out a broad framework of relevant matters that will be considered before the Secretary of State announces the dashboards available point. That will include consideration of the level of coverage; ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the service; and testing the user experience.

[Matt Rodda]

Could the Minister tell the House what plans the Department has to publicise the roll-out of the dashboards? Clearly many pension savers are already not aware of their full entitlement, and there is a risk that they may not be aware of the dashboard itself.

[Laura Trott]

The timetable set out in the regulations is about pension providers uploading the information to the dashboard. When that is available for individuals is a decision that the Secretary of State then has to take, but the timetable for information being uploaded is public and is the one agreed in the regulations. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle said, in order to ensure compliance with dashboards regulations, the Pensions Regulator has been given power to take enforcement action for non-compliance with any of the requirements in part 3 of the Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022. That includes the possibility that the regulator may, at its discretion, issue penalty notices of up to £5,000 for individuals or up to £50,000 in other cases, such as corporate trustees. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire asked me lots of questions, and I will write to him, because I need to hurry up.

In conclusion, it is to the huge credit of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle that she successfully brought the Bill forward on a cross-party basis and navigated its passage. I am delighted to restate that the Government support the Bill and will continue to support it as it moves through Parliament. I wish it every success.

State Pension

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for her work on this important issue. I also thank other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. Above all, I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of people from across the country who signed the petition that led to this debate. Constituents have expressed their concern for older people, so it is right that we consider this matter today.

Pensioners face the worst cost of living crisis for over 40 years. The cost of food and fuel is up, and the cost of living as a whole is going up. Yet, at the same time, support for pensioners is failing to keep up with the severe pressure on older people. Those who have worked hard and contributed all their lives deserve to receive a decent state pension in retirement. The official Opposition support the triple lock and have repeatedly called for the state pension to rise in line with it during the last two years, but the Government’s approach has fallen well short of what is expected by pensioners and the country as a whole.

I will set out the scale of the cost of living crisis and then address the Government’s failure in this regard. It is clear that this crisis is the worst squeeze on the incomes of families and pensioners since the 1970s. Sadly, inflation has hit over 10%—something unheard of in living memory. The situation facing people on low and fixed incomes is particularly difficult. Pensioners and others on modest incomes spend more of their disposable income on food and fuel, the prices of which have increased to a far greater extent than those of other goods. The prices of staples such as bread, cereals, tea, meat, dairy produce and eggs have all risen rapidly, and some have increased by far more than the headline rate of 10%. As is well known, the same is true of energy. Not only has the price of gas risen dramatically, but so has the price of electricity and heating oil. In the meantime the Government have dithered and delayed, and put off addressing these important issues.

I turn to the Government’s poor record and to the lack of—indeed, the delays to—support for poor pensioners. Despite raising the state pension in line with the triple lock being a manifesto pledge, Ministers repeatedly failed to meet that commitment. Last year the Government said that earnings appeared to have grown by a larger amount, because the return to work after furlough created the impression that earnings had increased by 8%. They used that as an excuse for disapplying the triple lock, preventing pensioners from getting the rise in the state pension that they clearly deserved. We repeatedly challenged the Government, but they simply would not listen to our concerns.

To make matters worse, this year Ministers refused for months to commit to increasing the state pension in line with inflation. Campaigners repeatedly pressed them on the issue, and the official Opposition raised the matter in Parliament a number of times. As a result of the Government’s dither and delay, pensioners were left wondering what would happen to them at a time when they were facing a very difficult winter. After months of delay, and considerable pressure and stress for older people, Ministers eventually confirmed at the autumn statement that the state pension would rise in line with inflation. Those failures and persistent delays let pensioners down badly, so I hope the Minister will find time to apologise for them when she replies.

The Government have failed pensioners on a number of other matters relating to the state pension—for example, pension credit and some of the problems relating to the energy price guarantee. I want to raise those related issues, because both policies should be offering far more help than they do at present.

Pension credit tops up the incomes of some of the most vulnerable pensioners, who receive a particularly modest income. However, about 1 million pensioners who are entitled to the benefit are not claiming it. Will the Minister explain why the Government are still failing on this matter? What more can be done to ensure that pensioners claim pension credit to raise their incomes, as they deserve?

Although help is now available with heating costs, there are gaps in the scheme—not least that it will be scaled back next year. In the meantime, payments for some pensioners in rented accommodation are still not being passed on by landlords. Concerns have been raised in my constituency, and I am sure Members across the House have experienced the same issue. I hope the Minister will respond to that point.

Time is pressing, but I want once again to thank the members of the public who signed the petition, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, who spoke so eloquently, and other Members from across the House. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Trott]

We know that claims for pension credit have tripled since the summer. On average, we used to get 2,000 claims a week—that has gone up to 6,000. The seven out of 10 figure that everybody uses comes from the family resources survey, which was last done in 2019-20, which has caused the difficulty with exact details on eligibility. Because of the pandemic, the survey has not been repeated, and there is an 18-month delay on the figures. It is very difficult to get up-to-date data on actual eligibility levels, which is something that we need to address over the longer term. In the interim, though, we have the numbers of people who are making the claims through the line, which, as I have said, have gone up threefold.

[Matt Rodda]

Could the Minister explore the issue of pensioners who do not have English as their first language and other hard-to-reach groups whom Government information often struggles to reach? There have been success stories in the past where particular approaches have worked with some minority groups. Perhaps the Minister could write to me and other colleagues present on that matter.

[Laura Trott]

I am very happy to do so. If there are any specific approaches the hon. Gentleman thinks the Government should be taking, I am very open to any ideas he may have and would happily take them forward.

The £650 cost of living payment is one of a number of measures in the Government’s £37 billion cost of living support package, which will ensure that the most vulnerable households will receive at least £1,200 this year. The package also includes a £400 reduction on energy bills for all domestic electricity customers over the coming months, plus a £150 council tax rebate for 85% of all UK households.

In addition to the steps we have taken to address the cost of living for pensioners, we have also made long-term reforms to the state pension and introduced automatic enrolment to boost private saving. In 2016, the Government introduced the new state pension, which forms a clear foundation for individuals’ private savings to provide the retirement they want. At the heart of its design, we sought to correct some historic unfairness in the previous system, in particular for women, self-employed people and lower-paid workers. More than 3 million women are set to receive an average of £550 more a year by 2030. State pension outcomes are also expected to equalise for men and women by the early 2040s—more than a decade earlier than they would have aligned under the old system.

I want to pause here to mention pensioner poverty, which was brought up by a number of hon. Members. I know it is something we all care deeply about. The Government are committed to action that helps to alleviate the levels of pensioner poverty. We are forecast to spend more than £134 billion on benefits for pensioners in 2022-23, which amounts to 5.4% of GDP and includes spending on the state pension that is forecast to be over £110 billion in 2022-23. Thankfully, there are 400,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty, both before and after housing costs, than in 2009-10, but there is, of course, always more to do.

Automatic enrolment, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), is transforming private saving. More than 10.7 million people have been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension and more than 2 million employers have complied with their duties to date. This has helped to supply around an additional £33 billion into pensions savings in real terms in 2021 compared to 2012. I want to bring up the findings of the 2017 review of measures for automatic enrolment, as the hon. Member for Battersea mentioned her support for the lower earnings limit. The 2017 review of automatic enrolment set out the ambition to enable people to save more and to start saving earlier by abolishing the lower earnings limit and reducing the qualifying age for automatic enrolment to 18 by the mid-2020s. We have always been clear that changes would be made in a way and at a time that are affordable, balancing the needs of savers, employers and taxpayers, and the Government are absolutely still committed to that.

Together, the new state pension, automatic enrolment to workplace pensions and the safety net of pension credit will provide a robust system for pensioners for decades to come. A number of Members talked about international comparisons; OECD rankings show that, thanks to this Government’s reforms, the UK pensions systems will provide future workers with income replacement rates comparable to the OECD average and higher than countries such as Switzerland, Norway and Germany.

Let me turn to the second suggestion: decreasing the state pension age to 60. The Government have no plans to reverse changes to the state pension age. Previous reforms have focused on maintaining the right balance between affordability, the sustainability of the state pension and fairness between generations. Changes to state pension age were made through a series of Acts, and by successive Governments, from 1995 onwards. Those reforms followed public consultations and extensive debates in both Houses of Parliament. The state pension is funded through the national insurance and tax contributions of the current working-age population. Like increasing the state pension, reducing the state pension age to 60 would massively increase the tax burden on the current working-age population and carry significant cost.

Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 9th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

We wholeheartedly support the principle that non-resident parents should pay child maintenance, and that there should be enforcement when absent parents fail to pay. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for her work on the Bill and, indeed, for her wider work on this complicated and important matter.

Too many absent parents fail to pay child maintenance, often leaving children and families in desperate need and emotional distress, which, as we heard earlier, can have very serious consequences for them. I pay tribute to those families who are suffering as a result of terrible backlogs and delays, and the whole House is deeply concerned about them. Many Members have tried to help constituents facing these dreadful problems, and will have responded through their casework. I also want to put on record my support for the work of charities such as Gingerbread that support parents, and to thank the Child Maintenance Service for its efforts in this important area. It continues to chase non-payment despite a series of difficult challenges, to which I shall refer later in my speech.

Turning to the substance of the Bill, as I said at the outset, we completely support the principle that non-resident parents should meet their responsibilities for child maintenance, and where they fail to do so the state must step in to enforce payment. The CMS manages over 500,000 arrangements for child support, affecting 750,000 children. Maintenance payments are very important in reducing child poverty, as the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) mentioned, and it has been estimated that as many as one in five single-parent families on benefits are lifted out of poverty by receiving child maintenance payments; that is an important point for us to consider. Not only do we support the principle, therefore, but we recognise that the enforcement of child maintenance obligations needs to be improved.

Enforcement action was affected by the pandemic. CMS staff were redeployed to manage the surge in universal credit claims, and the courts were closed. The number of liability orders in process fell from 6,900 in March 2020 to 2,400 in September 2020. That was a considerable drop, but since 2020 there has been only a partial recovery, and the most recent figures, for June 2022, are not only far lower than before the pandemic at 4,200, but are lower than in June 2021 by over 1,000 cases. The CMS therefore clearly faces some serious issues. The number of enforcement agency referrals now in process is less than half the number before the pandemic. The system for ensuring that child maintenance is paid needs to be efficient and fair, and we must address these points and discuss them thoroughly in this House.

Although I understand the principles behind the Bill, I therefore have some questions. As I understand it, the purpose of the Bill is to make changes to powers introduced in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, but it seems that some of the powers—those that allow the Secretary of State or Department to make an order without having to go to the courts—have not been used by the Government. I realise this is a detailed point, but I ask the Minister to address it in her reply and to reassure me on it.

The Bill makes provision for the Secretary of State to issue regulations governing appeals, and the powers granted are wide-ranging. For example, the Secretary of State will be able to make

“provision with respect to the period within which a right of appeal under the regulations may be exercised”

and

“provision with respect to the powers of the court to which the appeal under the regulations lies.”

This wording seems to give the Secretary of State a great deal of power to limit the grounds on which appeals can be made and the opportunity to appeal. Why are these powers being sought?

Time is limited today, so I will conclude. We whole-heartedly support the principle that non-resident parents should pay child maintenance and that there should be enforcement for absent parents who fail to pay. I again take this opportunity to thank the hon. Member for Stroud for her excellent work on this; she has a great deal of expertise and the House and country is benefiting from it. I also pay tribute to parents and families affected by this terrible problem, as well as charities and campaigners, and to CMS staff working on those parents’ behalf. I hope the Minister will address my questions; they are somewhat technical, however, and I would be happy for her to write to me with further detail on them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. He is right to say that. We have seen this in our constituency surgeries: there are always two sides to every story. It is right that we have processes that are able to respond to that and that parents are able to see and engage with their children. I reiterate that my hon. Friend in the other place, who has day-to-day policy responsibility for this matter, is very much focused on reducing parental conflict. Above all, this is about supporting children, getting them the best start and ongoing support to thrive in life.

Let me make some progress on the importance of today’s Bill. Child maintenance payments provide vital support to separated parents. Approximately 140,000 fewer children are growing up in poverty as a result of child maintenance payments. This includes payments through the family-based process and through the service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud has already stated, in the past 12 months, more than £1 billion-worth of support was arranged and collected through the Child Maintenance Service. That exemplifies the intent of the service, which is to promote collaboration between separated parents and encourage parents to meet their responsibilities in providing for their children, meaning that youngsters get the financial support that they need for that good start in life.

Research shows that children tend to have better emotional wellbeing and higher academic attainment growing up with parents who, together or indeed separated, have that good-quality relationship and are able to manage conflict well. Child maintenance cases are managed by two processes, as we discussed earlier. The collect and pay caseloads are more challenging. That is where a collaborative arrangement has either failed or not been possible. Therefore, these parents are considered less likely to meet their payment responsibilities.

We know the difference that child maintenance can make in people’s day-to-day lives, so unpaid child maintenance should be paid immediately. We know that the vast majority of parents want to do the right thing to support their children financially. Where a parent fails to pay on time or in full, our strategy is to tackle payment breakdowns at the earliest opportunity and to take action to re-establish compliance and collect any unpaid amounts where they have been accrued.

The Child Maintenance Service is able to deduct £8.40 a week towards ongoing maintenance or arrears from certain prescribed benefits, as I have discussed. Where measures prove ineffective or inappropriate in collecting arrears, the CMS will apply to the court service or the sheriff court for the liability order.

The liability order enables the use of more stringent powers, as we have heard, and we are able to take more serious action. Since June 2022, the Child Maintenance Service has collected £2.7 million from paying parents with the court-based enforcement action in process. We regularly review processes and policies in line with best practice to deliver the best outcomes for parents and children, and I note the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes.

[Matt Rodda]

rose—

[Mims Davies]

I just wanted to turn to the hon. Gentleman’s point. I would like to write to him on that as I am not the Minister responsible for that day to day. I hope that he will understand.

The details of these powers will be set out in secondary legislation, with the right for a liable parent to appeal against an administrative liability order. Regulation powers and other provisions will be included. That means that proper scrutiny can be undertaken by the Government and the relevant Committee. We can then make sure that the regulations include the right to appeal. Those regulations will also be subject to the affirmative procedure.

The Bill is of great importance for the Child Maintenance Service. It will make sure that we make the necessary improvements we have heard about today to the enforcement process and, above all, that we get the money to children more quickly. I am pleased that the Bill has been introduced, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud for bringing it to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Pensioners who have worked hard and saved all their lives face an unprecedented cost of living crisis. Meanwhile, the Government dithered and delayed, but after considerable pressure from the Opposition side of the House, they eventually agreed to increase the state pension to offer some help with fuel bills. However, these delays have left pensioners angry, confused and, as we heard earlier, frustrated. Can the Minister please tell the House how many pensioners will be left freezing and cold with no heating on this winter?

[Laura Trott]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for highlighting the record rise in state pension brought forward by this Government. We are, as ever, on the side of pensioners as we go through this winter, and I would point out that the state pension has doubled from the level we were left by Labour in 2010.

Draft Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 General Committees

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Murray. These important regulations potentially affect not only everybody in this room, but everybody in the country, so it is vital that the Government get them right. Labour supports the pensions dashboards policy and today’s statutory instrument, which we hope takes us a stage closer to fruition. However, I have some important questions on both the general principle and some specific points of detail on progress, which the Minister may like to write to me about.

It goes without saying that large IT programmes are subject to a certain amount of risk, and it is important that the Government take that into account. Some of what the Minister said this morning reassures me, but I have some further questions about data quality. I obviously will not go into enormous detail, because such matters are highly technical, but it would greatly reassure pension savers to know a little more about the risk management the Government are undertaking to protect data quality and personal information and to ensure that data is accessible. For example, people often change their name upon marriage or move job multiple times during their working lives, all of which is important to take into account, and the risk of fraud must be minimised. I hope the Minister will be able to elaborate on those points.

In addition, and in support of that previous point, I hope sufficient time will be taken to test the roll-out of this important approach. It involves a large amount of IT, complicated data issues, and the matching up of different databases of information on a large number of people.

I hope the Minister may be able to reassure me on one or two specific points. Is it possible to let pension savers have a better idea of the indexation of pensions? Some defined benefit schemes are fully indexed with inflation, but others partially follow inflation. During this cost of living crisis, it would be of great reassurance to savers to know the future value of their savings. I understand that the Department has so far decided not to include that level of information, so might the Minister be able to look into that and write to me?

I thank you, Mrs Murray, for the opportunity to speak this morning, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister in due course.

State Pension Triple Lock

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am pleased to close this important debate for the Opposition. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) said, it is about a simple and very important question: will the Government honour their manifesto pledge to millions of pensioners—13 million, many of whom have no income other than the state pension? As we have heard, the Government failed to raise the state pension in line with the triple lock last year and, to make matters worse, pensioners face in effect a £900 cut to their income if the triple lock is ignored this year.

The state pension matters enormously and, so far, the Government have failed to give pensioners the reassurance that they deserve. As my right hon. Friend said, this should not be a controversial question; it should simply be something that the whole House can agree with, yet that request for simplicity, clarity and reassurance at a difficult time has been met with a lack of understanding. I hope that the Minister in responding will think again, treat pensioners with more respect and reassure them that the Government will stick with the triple lock. The uncertainty of the last few weeks has put pensioners under terrible stress. That should never have happened. The Government should now reassure pensioners. As food and fuel bills soar, the very least that Ministers can do is give the simple answer that they will keep the triple lock in this difficult situation.

The debate has been an important opportunity for Members from across the House to remind Ministers of their duty to pensioners. Powerful arguments have been made for openness and clarity. We have heard that, at a very difficult time, pensioners and others on fixed incomes are under real pressure. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) reminded the House that pensioners face a desperate situation with bills rising and called for clarity. The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who is in his place, stressed his support for the triple lock and the importance of the state pension to many of his constituents. He also called on the Government to do much more to encourage pensioners to claim pension credit.

The Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), made some excellent points, including that the Government, sadly, made a series of serious blunders in September. There has already been a big fall in the value of state pensions and the Government gave an assurance that pensions would be uprated. That was a manifesto commitment. He also gave us historical context, going back as far as the 1970s. Pensions have been uprated over a long period. Further, he went on to make the telling point that there is a social contract between people in work, the Government and pensioners.

Other Members made excellent points. The hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) called for the triple lock to be retained. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) made a powerful speech in which she talked about the importance of protecting the most vulnerable and the Government’s duty to do that on behalf of society as a whole.

There was a huge number of other contributions, which I cannot refer to in great detail. However, in summary, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) made an excellent speech, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) spoke, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood) also spoke powerfully. The hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), for Wantage (David Johnston), for Guildford (Angela Richardson), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) and for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) spoke, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and a number of others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) made a fascinating and important point about the miners’ pension fund and the need for the Government not to take money out of it. The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) made an important point about ASW, the issues with the Pension Protection Fund and those pension funds that got into difficulty before the PPF was set up. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) made some powerful points as well, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who pointed out the pressure on pensioners from the cost of living crisis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) made some powerful points, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), who talked about pensioner poverty rising, affecting half a million people. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) spoke eloquently about the need for security at this time.

Time is pressing. Today’s debate has been full and frank, and I hope Ministers will now respond with the honesty and transparency that pensioners deserve. As my hon. Friends and Members from across the House have said, this is a very important issue. The Government made a manifesto pledge and, last year, Ministers broke that pledge. Pensioners across the country are now facing unprecedented levels of inflation, particularly in food and fuel. Given that, it is vital that Ministers keep the triple lock and that they reassure pensioners of their intentions before the financial statement at the end of this month. Quite simply, pensioners have waited for too long, suffered too much uncertainty and put up with far too much stress for the Government to do anything less.

It is, as hon. Members have mentioned, the first duty of Government to protect the most vulnerable. I hope the Minister will now offer clarity and reassurance for millions of people across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Minister to her place. The last few weeks have been difficult and, at times, chaotic. The Government have crashed the economy and there has been a revolving door in Downing Street and Government Departments. After all that confusion, will the Minister take the opportunity to reassure the House that the Government are truly committed to the triple lock? Will she apologise to pensioners for the stress and uncertainty that the Government have caused through their repeated attempts to wriggle out of their manifesto commitment?

[Laura Trott]

I do understand the uncertainty, but we must wait for 17 November. However, the average state pension is £185 a week, which is about double what it was in 2010 when we took over.

Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Friday 28th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition to this important debate. We support this important Bill and see it as a welcome step forward. Domestic abuse has an appalling impact on women and families. As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), said,

“everyone has the right to live in freedom from fear.”

This Bill will make some welcome changes to the law to protect parents, children and wider families who are the victims of domestic abuse. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for her work on this important Bill and I thank hon. Members from across the House for their support today. I thank all those who have campaigned on this important issue and in particular Refuge, Gingerbread and, in my own area, Berkshire Women’s Aid.

As I mentioned before, we support this important piece of legislation. However, I hope the Government will clarify some important points to reassure survivors and consider doing more to help former partners, children and wider families in a number of ways that are related to the Bill. Turning to points of clarification, I hope the Minister will explain what evidence will be required to allow the Secretary of State to collect child maintenance payments in the way that we heard earlier. We have been told that the evidence will be set out in secondary legislation, and it is important to remember that the effectiveness of the Bill hinges on the evidence requirements in these regulations. It would be helpful if the Minister reassured the House about the nature of the evidence that will be needed.

In addition to providing further clarification, I hope the Government will consider introducing measures that offer further help and support to the survivors of domestic abuse. For example, will the Minister consider reviewing the fees associated with using the collect and pay service? That was a point raised by a number of hon. Members. Carrying out a review would allow the Government to make an informed decision about whether to scrap some of the fees for domestic abuse survivors.

As we have heard, it is still far too easy for perpetrators not to pay child maintenance and withholding it is a common form of post-separation abuse. Could the Minister tell the House when the DWP will publish the findings of the independent review of the Child Maintenance Service’s domestic abuse operational policies and procedures? I remind him, as we heard from a Government Member, that this investigation was due to finish in April and yet, six months later, we have still not heard from the Department. On the CMS’s treatment of survivors of domestic abuse, concerns have been raised that, sadly, there have been times when CMS staff could have offered a better service to survivors. I hope the Minister will be able to update the House on plans to improve staff training.

Finally, an important point raised by social workers who work with domestic abuse survivors is that the cost of living crisis has a far worse impact on victims of domestic abuse and, in some cases, it may even create another significant obstacle to finding help. I encourage the Government to consider taking additional measures to understand how they can help survivors to manage in the cost of living crisis. I hope the Minister has listened to these points and will consider them carefully. If he is not able to respond in full from the Dispatch Box, I ask him to write to me and the shadow victims Minister to update us on the Government’s response to these important issues. Time is pressing, so I will conclude by emphasising that this important Bill could make a significant difference to a group of women and children who have suffered appalling domestic abuse, and I urge the Minister to consider the points I have raised.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

On his reincarnation, if that is the right word, I call Tom Pursglove.

Pension Credit and Cost of Living Support Grant

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) on securing the debate, and I thank everybody who has spoken on this important subject.

Families and pensioners across the country face an unprecedented cost of living crisis. They need help and support at this difficult time, and it is important that questions be asked about the nature of the Government response. I turn first to the scale of the cost of living crisis. There is no doubt that we face a crisis, the like of which has not been seen since at least the 1950s. Costs faced by families and pensioners have risen dramatically: the cost of energy is going up, the cost of food is going up, and the overall cost of living is going up.

I want to focus on some specifics, including the recent data on inflation. We learned yesterday that everyday foods have risen by over 10%, which hits pensioners and others on low incomes very hard. For example, the price of a loaf of bread has risen by 37.6%, and the cost of tea has risen by 46%. These are dramatic rises that show the importance of pension credit. The benefit was designed to help pensioners on very modest incomes, and it is an important legacy of Gordon Brown’s leadership, both at the Treasury and as the UK’s Prime Minister, during the last Labour Government. The current Government are failing to encourage sufficient take-up of this important benefit, and we should bear in mind that many of the recipients of pension credit are women, while others are disabled.

As discussed earlier, nearly 1 million pensioners are eligible for this important benefit but go without it at the moment. That is a total of £1.7 billion unclaimed—to put it another way, that is £1,900 for every qualifying household missing out. It is a staggering sum of money that could make a real difference. This is particularly important because pension credit unlocks other benefits, such as free TV licences for the over-75s. Questions to the Department for Work and Pensions have revealed that the Department is spending approximately £1.2 million on increasing the take-up of pension credit, yet it is still failing to achieve a sufficient level of awareness, as we have heard. A Labour Government would treat this issue very seriously. It would be one of the key priorities for the Department, and we would work really hard to encourage take-up.

In the remaining time available to me, I ask the Minister three questions. As we have heard, there is a lot that the Government should be explaining. First, what is the Government’s plan to support pensioners and working families, in both the short and long term? Secondly, how will the Government control inflation and bring down the spiralling cost of living after causing this cost of living crisis? Thirdly, how will Ministers increase the take-up of pension credit for those who urgently need it? I hope the Minister is able to respond to those questions, and to the other points made in the debate. I ask him to commit in writing to responding to me on this issue.

I appreciate that time is pressing and the Minister needs to respond. Let me reiterate the scale of the crisis that we face, and the need for a clear and consistent response. I urge the Government to do a much better job of encouraging take-up of this very important benefit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Alex Burghart)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me; I am losing my voice, but I will try to speak as clearly as I can into the microphone. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for securing this important debate on an important subject. I pay tribute to her campaigning work, because helping people to realise the benefits to which they are entitled helps everybody in society. I know she understands that.

My Department will always welcome opportunities to explain what we are already doing to support pensioners. We know the importance of ensuring that people up and down the country are looked after, post retirement. This topic is particularly pertinent given the recent increase in the cost of living. We are taking this challenge incredibly seriously, which is why we have spent more than £37 billion this year on cost of living support, as well as delivering on the energy price guarantee.

This financial year, total expenditure on benefits for pensioners will be well over £134 billion, which represents about 5.4% of GDP. This high investment ensures that the basis of our safety net for pensioners—the full yearly basic state pension—remains strong. It has brought the British state pension in line with that in other OECD countries. The amount that we provide is higher than it is in countries such as Switzerland, Norway and Germany. One of the major successes of this Government, auto-enrolment, has led to over 10.7 million extra employees paying into a workplace pension, so that they can save for a safe and secure future. The issue is particularly pertinent today, because it is the 10th anniversary of auto-enrolment.

[Matt Rodda]

Would the Minister like to pay tribute to the last Labour Government for designing the policy?

[Alex Burghart]

I certainly pay tribute to the last Labour Government, as well as the Pensions Commission, which had cross-party support, and the support of organisations such as the Centre for Social Justice, which I used to work for. Steve Webb, formerly of the Liberal Democrats, also contributed to that work. It was, however, the coalition Government, led by the Conservatives, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who made it happen. All that good work has had a demonstrable effect: in 2021, 400,000 fewer pensioners were in absolute poverty than when the Conservatives came to power. That is a remarkable achievement of which we are rightly proud.

To complement the state pension, pension credit—mentioned a number of times in this debate—offers an extra layer of support for people over state pension age and on a low income. Pension credit provides an invaluable top-up to a person’s state pension, ensuring that single pensioners receive a minimum of £182.60 per week and couples receive at least £278.70 per week. Crucially, as other hon. Members have mentioned, pension credit acts as a passport to other help, including for rent, council tax and heating.

A comprehensive benefit package including pension credit is only worth while if claimants access the support. We are aware that, historically, take-up of pension credit has been too low. To increase pension credit awareness, in April we launched a comprehensive paid advertising campaign, including a promotional video fronted by Len Goodman of “Strictly Come Dancing” and my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who did so much in his five years in the job to improve opportunities for people planning for their pensions and claiming them. That campaign has now been viewed well over a million times. The campaign further focused on encouraging the private sector to help drive up claims and reach those who may be reticent about claiming pension credit.

As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East said, no one should feel ashamed about claiming this money. The reason why we have it is so that people can come forward and take it. We want them to have it. Success for us is 100% of people claiming it. I do not think she was implying that the Government sought to stigmatise people who claim benefits—we absolutely do not. We have created a benefits system that is designed as a safety net to support the most disadvantaged in society, but also to help people who are capable of work to move into work.