Support for Pensioners

Debate between Rebecca Smith and Torsten Bell

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Torsten Bell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Dame Siobhain, in a debate on such an important topic. We owe thanks to the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing it, and I thank everybody who has contributed to it.

Recent years have been difficult for pensioners. They, along with the rest of Britain, have had to wrestle with a cost of living crisis, inflation in double digits for the first time in four decades, food prices rising even faster, and energy bills that have shot up—as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, before he mentioned that he is approaching a significant birthday. The debate is focused on whether it is 40 or 50, but we will celebrate whatever it is, as well as celebrating his form-filling success.

Everyone who has spoken in the debate will have spoken to constituents about the challenges posed by the cost of living crisis. I have certainly spoken to some of the 17,000 pensioners in Swansea West. This is an important debate and, as well as responding to the points that Members have raised, I will cover: what lessons we can learn from the past, celebrating some things that have worked and recognising where they have not; what the Government are doing today to support pensioners, covering lots of the points raised by Members; and, briefly, our future priorities, as requested by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith).

First, I will address the good news. In the 1990s, pensioner poverty was rampant. Almost 30% of UK pensioners were living in relative poverty. The old and the young—children—bore the brunt of the rise in poverty in the 1980s and early 1990s, but under the last Labour Government, not only did rates of pensioner poverty fall, but they had halved by the 2010 election. That did not happen by accident. Policy—including the introduction of pension credit, which we have discussed today—drove lots of that change, especially for women and older pensioners, and higher private pensions and employment rates further boosted pension incomes. But no one, of any party, thought that it was job done at that point, and I am sure that none of us thinks that today, not least because, in recent years, progress on pensioner poverty has stalled and relative pensioner poverty has risen by 300,000 since 2010.

Even though today the UK has a lower rate of relative poverty among pensioners than the OECD average, the fact remains that, as Members have said, pensioner poverty is still too high. It is 16% in Wales, and it is especially high for renters. Almost 40% of all pensioners in poverty are renters, and with growing numbers of private renters, the challenge looks likely to grow, reinforcing the point that the hon. Members for South West Devon and for Mid Bedfordshire made about the need for long-term planning.

There is another lesson from the last decade and a half: when growth stalls, the reductions in absolute pensioner poverty that we all used to take for granted slow or even grind to a halt, so growth matters for pensioners as it does for workers.

[Rebecca Smith]

Does the Minister not agree that, from 2010, the previous Government secured a 200,000 reduction in the number of pensioners in absolute poverty? I do not have details of what the figure might have been otherwise, but it is important to put that on the record, because nearly a quarter of a million is still a significant number.

[Torsten Bell]

I am loath to do this, but the honest answer is no—it is far too small a reduction. Absolutely poverty should be falling every year, very significantly. We should really only need to debate relative poverty measures because, in a growing economy, we should all be taking it for granted that absolute poverty is falling.

I hope that we can agree on two things: first—I think we do agree on this—that we must do better, and secondly, and more positively, that there are lessons to learn from what has worked over the last quarter of a century. While we are on a positive note, I can agree with the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) about the importance of community groups that support our pensioners, through Ageing Well in Swansea and, I am sure, lots of other devices around the country.

I am not under any illusions—even if I was, I could no longer be after the last hour and a quarter—about hon. Members’ views on the Government’s decision to target winter fuel payments at those on the lowest incomes. I will not rehearse all the arguments for that policy, but our dire fiscal inheritance is no secret. We owe it to the country—to all generations, young and old—to put that right, and that has involved wider tough decisions on tax and spending. I say gently to Members who oppose not just the targeting of winter fuel payments, but every tax rise proposed, that that has consequences. If they oppose every tough choice, they propose leaving our public finances on an unsustainable footing, and leaving our public services in a state that far too often lets down those who rely on them, not least pensioners.

Although we can no longer justify paying winter fuel payments to all pensioners, it is, as all Members have said, important that we do more to make sure pensioners receive the support they are entitled to. In recent months, we have run the biggest ever pension credit take-up campaign, because, although around 1.4 million pensioners currently receive pension credit, too many are missing out. I urge all pensioners to check whether they are entitled to support.

The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the complexity of the pension credit form. I have considered that, and there is more that we can do to simplify it. All I would say is that in our messaging to pensioners, we should be clear that most of the questions do not need to be answered by the people filling in the form. Currently, 90% fill in the form online or over the phone, and the average time taken to fill it in online is 16 minutes.