Social Security

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Before we start, I inform the House that I will bring in the Secretary of State at the end of the debate. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

1.30 pm

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 869), dated 22 August 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 22 August, be annulled.

The Labour party—the Government—said in the general election that it would bring in a new style of politics; politics centred on integrity and transparency. So it was that during the election, we held them to account and pressed them on tax, among other matters. We will find out, with the Budget at the end of next month, whether they were telling the truth—I have my suspicions. But we have already discovered one thing right now. We also pressed them on the winter fuel payment, from which millions of pensioners benefit up and down the country. Why? Because the Conservative party stands four-square behind our elderly. We believe that they should have security and dignity in their later years.

We received cast-iron assurances from the Labour party. In fact, the then shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones)—[Hon. Members: “Where is he?”] That is a good question. He said when pressed that the Labour party had “no plans” to do anything in respect of the winter fuel payment. Indeed, Labour candidates up and down the country gleefully pointed to their manifesto as having no mention of doing anything on this particular matter. But look at what has happened in a matter of a few short weeks. What happened to integrity? What happened to transparency? They went out of the window—broken promises already. The special contract that Labour sought to have with the British people based on integrity and decency has been smashed into a million pieces.

What is the impact of these measures? To a degree, we do not know—I will come to that—but we do know that nine out of 10 pensioners will lose the winter fuel payment of up to £300 at a most difficult time of year for millions of them, and a time when the energy price cap is going up by 10%. There is a suggestion from Labour Members that somehow only the wealthy—the millionaires—are affected. Far from it: two thirds of pensioners living below the poverty line will have this benefit removed. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not like hearing it. The 880,000 pensioners who we know are eligible for pension credit but are not yet receiving it will also suffer—[Interruption.] Labour Members chunter from sedentary positions, but although they say that they will have wonderful campaigns to get everybody who is entitled on to pension credit, in reality, even if they did so it would cost the Exchequer £3.8 billion, which is over twice the money that they say they will save. It is an absurd policy that their own plans are actively working against.

The haste with which this has been carried out is simply jaw-dropping. We do not have any impact assessments.

[Mike Amesbury (Runcorn and Helsby) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Mel Stride]

I will in a moment. We do not know what the impact will be across the income distribution. No Member of this House knows what the impact will be within their own constituency. We do not know what the recommendation of the Social Security Advisory Committee will be. Why? Because it will not be given the information until tomorrow, we are told. And of course, the measure does not form part of what it should: a major fiscal event with the Office for Budget Responsibility scoring it and an economic and fiscal outlook accompanying it.

[Mike Amesbury]

rose—

[Mel Stride]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman.

In fact, the only authority to comment thus far on these measures is the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which said:

“We are unconvinced by the reasons given for the urgency attached to laying these Regulations and are particularly concerned that this both precludes appropriate scrutiny and creates issues with the practicalities of bringing in the change at short notice.”

That, I think, says it all.

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Mel Stride]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been very patient.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for finally giving way. Will he clarify which Conservative leadership contender has called for the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance?

[Mel Stride]

I am left feeling that that intervention was barely worth the wait.

The fact that we even have a debate today is near miraculous given the resistance from the Labour party—we have it thanks to the scrutiny that the Conservative party is providing to the Government. We know that petitions have been railing against the measures: 100,000 people have signed the Silver Voices petition, a third of a million the 38 Degrees petition, and over half a million the Age UK petition. They are calling on the Government to think again. The press, particularly the Express newspaper, is doing a sterling job in bringing these matters to our attention. Even the trade union movement, including Unite, is pointing a finger at the Government and saying that they are picking the pockets of pensioners.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

There is a sense of disappointment. Yesterday, the Health Secretary was dragged in here because a multimillion-pound-making consultant in the health industry is wandering corridors with access to papers, and today pensioners are being betrayed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when people voted Labour, they thought that they were getting change and transparency? They were promised higher standards; they are getting the opposite.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his appropriate intervention. He is right, of course. The only surprising thing is how remarkably quickly this has all fallen apart.

The Government will take responsibility for what has happened. They will blame us, with this fictitious black hole. The Leader of the House has suggested—I invite Labour Members to support her in this assertion—that the measure is necessary in order to avoid a “run on the pound.” It is just as well that Labour is not in charge of the economy, or we might end up in a real mess.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that if a local council had run its finances into the ground, in the way that his party did to the country’s finances with a £22 billion black hole, he would have called in the commissioners in the morning and instigated swingeing cuts? Can I ask him—[Interruption.] Given that that is the case, and that he now seems to have decided that his party no longer cares about balancing the books, will he apologise—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mel Stride]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That slightly lengthy question might be better addressed by way of a rather lengthy letter to the leaders of Birmingham city council.

Of course, all politics is about choices, and what this Government have done is cave in to their trade union paymasters. They have settled way above inflation. Junior doctors—22%. Train drivers—14%. They have stood up for their trade union paymasters on the backs of vulnerable pensioners, and that is not right. If it is not the case that the trade unions are running the Labour party, hands up everybody on the Government Benches who has not received money from the trade unions for their campaigning or their private office. [Hon. Members: “One!”] One person. Therein lies the truth about who is running the Labour party.

Of course, we have seen all of this before. Under the last Labour Government, we had the 75p pension increase, we had Gordon Brown’s stealth tax on private pensions—£118 billion in total—and was it any surprise that we ended up with the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty across the whole of Europe?

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about choices and pensioners. When his party chose to suspend the triple lock in 2021 and give a below-inflation increase to pensioners, costing them £500, what was his concern then? Why did he say nothing?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We went into the election promising the triple lock plus. Unlike his party, under which millions of pensioners are going to be dragged into income tax spend, many of them for the first time, we were prepared to stand up and say that we would not do that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mel Stride]

How could I not?

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman and his party for bringing forward this issue, which is massive for my constituents and those across the whole United Kingdom. I say this with respect to the Labour party: this policy does not conform to any Labour party policies that I have seen in the past. Pensioners who have contacted me say that they are concerned because the threshold is too low, because pension credit will take nine weeks to process even if it gets to the 28% who are eligible in Northern Ireland, and because the £400 that the Labour Government have approved will not come until spring next year. Those are three reasons why the motion has to be supported.

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right, as always, and I completely agree with every word that he has just said.

We are the party of the triple lock, and we were the party of the triple lock plus. We are the party that has raised the state pension by £3,700 since 2010, and we are the party that has seen 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty since we came to office. That is now going to go into reverse.

I will now, rather more gently and rather more quietly, make an impassioned plea to Government Members: look to your conscience. You know in your hearts that these measures are wrong, that the Labour party has broken its promises, and that these measures will lead to untold hardship for millions of elderly and vulnerable people right up and down the country. You now have an opportunity to join with us and put a stop to it.