Occupied Palestinian Territories: Israeli Settlements

Debate between Richard Graham and Crispin Blunt

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady. The implications of these settlements are catastrophic. One should not belittle the seriousness of the issue. As I was saying, settlements are illegal under international law for a reason. One cannot conquer someone else’s territory and then colonise it. The end of that era was codified in the Geneva convention in 1949, and our experience since has been of decolonisation. That it should have happened over the past 50 years at the hands of a nation born out of the moral authority of the appalling treatment of the Jews in Europe over centuries that culminated in the holocaust is deeply troubling for the admirers of the heroic generation that founded the state of Israel.

We rightly talk about all that should be celebrated in Israel, which is often described as a beacon of our shared values in a troubled region, but the truth is that Palestinians, the Arab world and the wider international community, including our own population, increasingly see Israel through the clouded prism of the settlements.

Within Israel, there is no consensus on settlements. The recent regularisation law has raised a particularly rancorous debate. It was Benny Begin, the son of a former Prime Minister and a Likud Member of the Knesset, who dubbed the law as the “robbery law”, while the head of the Zionist Union, Isaac Herzog, called it “a threat” to Israel. It is worth remembering that Parliaments cannot make legal what international law proscribes.

[Richard Graham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the expansion of illegal settlements is to the despair of many people who wish Israel well and plays precisely into the hands of those who believe that there is a cynical intent never to pursue a two-state solution?

[Crispin Blunt]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend.

It distresses me that, despite the formal reiteration of the British position on settlements, the recent signals from the Government—briefing against the Kerry speech, not participating in the Paris conference and receiving an Israeli Premier who has just presided over the regularisation law and who is in deep domestic trouble— suggest that they do not fully appreciate the seriousness of this obstacle to peace and the threat to the values of a nation that our history of personal, economic and security relationships makes a firm friend and ally. Friends should not allow each other to make profound and damaging mistakes, which is why I support this motion.

Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Richard Graham and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is making some good points on an important issue, but does he agree that the providers and creators in financial companies have missed a trick over the years with regard to product innovation, and that they have depended too much on the monopoly of annuitisation, which has inhibited them—in effect, it has prevented them—from creating new products more suited to many of our constituents?

[Crispin Blunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the market in which Just Retirement and Partnership, as two smaller companies, identified the need for better, value-for-money products for individuals such as smokers and others with more limited life expectancy so that they could get greater annuity rates. They tried to promote those products in the market, but their problem was inertia in the market. People simply did not evaluate the options open to them and simply rolled over their pension pot provision in order to get an annuity from their existing provider, without looking at what was available in the rest of the market. What we are trying to do with the guidance—this is why I wholeheartedly support the reforms—is make sure that we create a much more active, liberal market whereby people are aware that they have choices to exercise and are able get the information in order to do so in an informed way.

[Richard Graham]

Some Opposition members of the Bill Committee raised concerns about guidance, but does my hon. Friend agree that the fundamental point of the changes that this Bill and the Treasury’s Taxation of Pensions Bill will introduce is recognition that annuitisation as was will undoubtedly lead to some scandals and mis-selling, which this Bill should put right and prevent in the future?

[Crispin Blunt]

That was the exact result of the paternalistic way in which we legislated to require annuities. Frankly, it led to market failure as a result of inertia in the market and people not exercising the choices available to them, because we seemed to be telling them precisely what they had to do. Now that we are liberalising the system and giving people the responsibility to manage the money they have saved, we obviously have to deal with the vexed issue of guidance to make sure that people make sensible decisions, by and large, but at least they should be informed decisions about the resources they have saved. These market reforms are founded on a belief in consumer empowerment, but without the effective implementation of the guidance guarantee, they may fail. That is why the guidance guarantee is so important.

We have already heard about the detail of and debated the need for a second line of defence, in that the Financial Conduct Authority must protect the estimated 8% to 96% of people—rather a wide estimate—who might not take up the guidance. That, however, is not the purpose of amendment 73.

The industry and consumers need the Treasury to take a lead and confirm the contents of the guidance. Why the Treasury continues to maintain its conspiracy of silence is a mystery to me. It is of some concern that four and a half months before the start date, the FCA, Citizens Advice, the Pensions Advisory Service and providers have no concrete clue about exactly what the guidance will entail, including whether it will consider sources of income that are alternatives to defined contribution pension schemes.

Dominic Lindley, an author and consultant at Which?, gave evidence in Committee suggesting that as little as 4% of a saver’s wealth is tied up in defined- contribution schemes. The over-55s have an average of £271,000 invested in property, and it is natural that such assets should increasingly form a component of retirement income. The average amount lent through an equity release scheme jumped 12% to £67,000 last year, while defined contribution pension pots remain stagnant at £20,000 on average.

The Conservative party and I presume our allies—including the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), who supports my amendment 73—have always believed in the value of property ownership, and the Government must reflect that in their pensions policy. That is why we must recognise that equity release will be a critical part of future retirement provision. When we appreciate that £1.4 trillion-worth of property assets are held by older people, that puts into perspective the scale of the assets that have the potential to give older people a more comfortable retirement, if they can properly access them.

In Committee, the Minister said that he anticipated—he repeated this in an intervention—that the information that consumers would be encouraged to gather in a standardised format before they received the guidance would include state pension rights and assets such as housing equity. He also remarked that the more they put into the guidance session, the more they would get out of it.

The Equity Release Council is pleased by the recognition that assets other than defined contribution pension savings should be taken into consideration. However, that has not been explicitly stated in the Bill, and so far it relates only to the initial phone call to set up the guidance session. I support the Equity Release Council’s wish for the Government explicitly to recognise that housing wealth represents a significant source of potential retirement income, and for that to be considered during the delivery of pensions guidance.

I will therefore listen very carefully to the Minister before I invite the massed ranks of Opposition Members and, I hope, Government Members to support my amendment 73. I am reasonably hopeful that the Minister will give me a satisfactory response.

[Crispin Blunt]

I am trying to suggest what is in the amendment:

“Individuals delivering the pensions guidance must ask those receiving the guidance about other potential sources of retirement income in addition to defined contribution pension schemes; this must include an assessment of assets such as housing wealth, savings and investments.”

It is not meant to be prescriptive, but if someone has a tiny portfolio as their defined contribution scheme, relative to their whole portfolio, why are they not directed to their major asset, which is likely to be their house? What consideration might they give to using that asset to make their retirement more comfortable than it would otherwise be?

Pension reform seeks to give people sensible access to their assets, and for them to make sensible decisions. With equity release, for example, does it make sense to sell and downsize and give the estate agent a whack of money while being forced to move in order to release assets, or rather to stay in the house and release assets through an equity release scheme?

[Richard Graham]

It is an interesting point, and I am sure my hon. Friend would agree that the difficulty in the wording is because it is up to the individual to explain their circumstances and list their own assets, if indeed they have any. The vast majority of my constituents—and, I suspect, those of many other Members—have little in the way of assets, other than what they have been encouraged or able to save through their pension.

[Crispin Blunt]

Everybody’s position will be different. There will be people with small pensions sitting in quite large houses, and they will have limited income but a significant capital asset. When they receive advice on pension provision on retirement, what is their plan to be? We must try to get such people into the best possible place and to make sensible decisions about their future. It is not only the Equity Release Council saying that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Graham and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I fear that the hon. Lady will share the frustration of the Opposition Front-Bench team. We will make clear the position on the victims commissioner along with all the other victims and witness issues when we properly respond to the consultation that we have just engaged with on our policies.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

T7. Will the Minister say when the review of the justice needs of Gloucestershire will be finished? Given that both the Crown and the magistrates courts in Gloucester are top of the list for replacement in the south-west of England, will he confirm that his Department will look closely at the proposal, which he knows I strongly advocate, for a new justice centre that brings together courts, tribunal and police station in the heart of Gloucester’s Barbican site?