Draft Public Service Pensions Revaluation (Prices) Order 2016

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 General Committees

[Greg Hands]

Let me answer the first question. The hon. Gentleman will have a longer memory than I have, but RPI has also gone negative in the past. It is not impossible that exactly same phenomenon could happen with RPI, his preferred measure of inflation.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I think I am right in saying that RPI was negative in 2008, during the great recession. It is a constant hazard of recessions that there will be those negative indicators. Am I not also right in thinking that the main reason why CPI was chosen over RPI was precisely that the vast majority of pensioners are not still paying off their mortgages, whereas those people who are have predominantly not retired?

[Greg Hands]

My hon. Friend is right. For all kinds of good reasons the Government made the decision to move this whole sector of public pensions and benefits from RPI to CPI. I think he is right that at that time RPI had gone negative.

If I could answer the final couple of points from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston—