Pensions Bill

Debate between Richard Graham and Sheila Gilmore

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

Alas, I was not at the pensions Minister’s meeting with the Financial Times. However, the hon. Gentleman has raised a rather different question from the one I asked; I had mentioned his description of the current triple lock as a triumph of rhetoric over reality. Most of my pensioner constituents would describe it as a triumph of financial reality for their pensions.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The hon. Gentleman’s history appears to be slightly at odds with reality. The infamous 75p increase—nobody would say that it was particularly happy—was based on certain rules. It happened, I think, in 2000, so it was not the last time that the previous Labour Government raised pensions. The arrangement applied in every year of the Conservative Government after the earnings link had been broken. If inflation had provided for a 75p increase in 1996, doubtless that increase would have been given. Nothing was particularly different from what had been in place during the 18 years of Conservative Governments.

[Richard Graham]

I read modern history, not ancient history, at university. My clear recollection of recent and modern history is that the hon. Lady’s party contributed three things to the evolution of pensions. First, there was the abolition of the advance corporation tax on dividends, which has been estimated to have cost occupational pension schemes about £100 billion. Secondly, although the hon. Lady’s Government made great play of criticising the breaking of the link between pensions and earnings by an earlier Conservative Government, over 13 years her Governments failed to do anything at all about it.

Thirdly, the contrast between the 75p increase and the £234 that I have just described represents, by any standards, a pretty compellingly disappointing story for the Labour party. I will not dwell on the Labour party’s shame on the matter of pensions, because it is well known to the House. However, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, recently described his Government’s approach over 13 years as “evolutionary”. Evolving an approach towards a single state pension over 13 years is different from putting forward a Bill and implementing a single state pension, which is what this coalition Government are doing today.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Richard Graham and Sheila Gilmore

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Gentleman, with his great experience of these matters, asks a technical question which I am fully confident the Minister will answer in detail in due course.

I promised I would be brief, Mr Amess, so let me come to the point. In effect, tonight we have debated in practical terms the benefits of tax credits against the benefits of tax allowances. I argue that tax credits, the chosen policy of the previous Government, were flawed by their cynicism, having been increased by 58% just before the 2005 election and by 20% just before the 2010 election. I am sorry to say that those were giant electoral bribes that led directly to the greatest bust of all times. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East spoke about moral divisions, and to hear that from a Member whose Government created pension credits, which divided pensioner from pensioner, discouraged saving, enabled arguments between—

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

I am sorry, but we have no more time for further interventions—

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Richard Graham and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Lady makes a perfectly valid point. Some workers receive benefits, but I do not believe that any of them will receive benefits for their family equivalent to, let alone more than, £26,000 a year. I stand to be corrected, even immediately by e-mail to my office, but I am pretty confident.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I tend to agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not know Gloucester very well, but it would be unlikely for people in Edinburgh to reach that cap, which is exactly the difficulty. Not everywhere is the same. Hon. Members have said that some rents are far too high, but we cannot compare the situation of people in Gloucester with that of people in London.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is welcome to visit Gloucester. We have lots of things to show her that she will enjoy. If her point was that there are specific problems in London, I agree with her, but I shall come to that later if I may.

The second group of people in my constituency whom I want to address is those on the lowest wages of all. The Government have been clear that one of their major goals—many of us campaigned for this long before the general election—is to reduce, and if possible to eliminate, income tax for the lowest earners in our constituencies. They have done a great deal towards that goal—I believe that 1.1 million have been taken out of income tax altogether. What message do we send to those who are not earning very much and whom we would like to take out of income tax altogether if we do not cap the benefits that those not in work can clock up?

We should send the lowest earners the message that this Government are on their side. We want to take them out of income tax when we can, and at the same time, we want to put a cap on those families who, for whatever reasons, are unemployed. That is a very important message to send, for example, to the young worker at Asda in Barton and Tredworth, who finds that the presents she buys her children at Christmas are not nearly as good as those bought for the children of the family next door, who are living more comfortably on benefits. This is a worker-friendly policy and Bill.

The third group in my constituency whom I should like to address is those who are the most worried and the most vulnerable, including the disabled—I have had several mails from disabled people—war widows and those on PIP or attendance allowances. As the Minister has made absolutely clear, the Bill provides protection for the most vulnerable in our constituencies.

I absolutely recognise that people could well be affected by some elements of the Bill, and the vast majority of them probably live in London. It is not for me to speak on their behalf or on that issue, but the Minister has addressed the problem with three measures: first, the 10-month grace period; secondly, a special nine-month grace period for those who lose their job; and thirdly, a package of discretionary funding. That seems to me to be a significant proposal for hon. Members whose constituencies are likely to be affected.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) made a good point when he warned of the consequences of the Bill in a year or two. Many Government Members, including me, are new to the House and indeed to the world of politics, whereas he has years of experience. I do not have his experience of debating measures that sound great on the day but do not deliver quite what they intended, but in 2010 the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which I was a member, looked very carefully at changes to housing benefit. There were warnings from well-known charities such as Shelter and speeches from Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people would be thrown out of their accommodation and have to sleep rough on the streets. A year later, none of that has come to pass, although I may have missed something.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between Richard Graham and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the warm, or perhaps lukewarm, words from the Minister about our civil servants, I see the Bill as part of a concerted attack on the public sector and those who work in it. The war on the public sector is being waged by some parts of the media without contradiction from the Government, and, indeed, by large parts of the Government.

Creating a straw man or woman simply to knock it down is lazy politics, but that has been done this evening by speaker after speaker. It is a case of picking up an extreme example partly in order to divert public opinion from the reality. The aim is to win over public opinion—to make the public think, “Oh, that is dreadful! How can people receive payouts, or salaries like that? We must do something about it”, rather than see the reality.

We cannot get away from the economic argument. Earlier, one of my hon. Friends feared that, if he drifted on to the subject of the wider economy he might be accused of irrelevancy, but that subject is not irrelevant. We see a clear divide between the two sides of the House, not because Labour Members are not concerned about the deficit but because we have a different view of the economy, how it should be built, and how we should emerge from recessions. Members on the other side of the House obviously see the public sector as a drag on the economy and something that must be shrunk, and they tell us that lo and behold, the private sector will leap up to pick up the pieces.

[Richard Graham]

Does the hon. Lady accept that those of us on the Government Benches who have worked in the public sector find that very disappointing to hear?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Members on those Benches may find it disappointing to hear, but it is what many of my constituents who work in the public sector are hearing. They are witnessing a concerted attack on the sector and on public service. I am sure that many Members on the other side of the House genuinely believe that the public sector is pulling the economy down, but we do not believe it. We believe that we must not at this stage cut the public sector in such a way that the economy is put at risk, but that is what will happen if the Bill is passed.

Public sector cuts will increase unemployment, and my constituents are asking me where the other jobs are. Over the past few weeks redundancies have been announced by Standard Life, which is a big employer in my city, and by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has also been a big employer there. My constituents are seeing such developments all around them. The construction industry has an administrative side, and people might otherwise have thought of working in that, but the sector has been decimated, and they know that there are no jobs.

We could all throw in such terrible examples. Members have spoken of low redundancy payments in the private sector, but we could cite the amount of money that Fred Goodwin received when his employment was terminated. Is it right for us to “equalise down”? We talk of equality, but why is it assumed that we should look to the least good employment conditions, and try to reduce the conditions of our public servants to that level? Some workers in the private sector do not receive sick pay. Where will it stop? Are we going to say, “That is a good idea—perhaps we should equalise downwards”? Such thinking constitutes a slippery slope, and in my view it is quite wrong. I am not surprised that my constituents are anxious.

Like some of my colleagues, I visited the local Jobcentre Plus during the summer break, and in many ways I found it an inspiring experience. It is a far cry from the old days when the staff sat behind glass barriers, frightened to come out, and people on the other side sat on chairs that were fastened to the ground—presumably in case they lifted them up and threw them—to arrange to sign on. A real effort has been made to do something that every party in the House considers important—to get people back to work—but how can that be done if the morale of the people who should be doing the job has been lowered?

I do not think that the Bill is the right way to deal with the situation. If we were serious about the outliers, the Bill would be about them. If the problem is people on very high payouts—we have heard about that from several Members today—why is the Bill not about that? If that is the problem, the Government should deal with it, rather than introducing a Bill which will hurt all civil servants including the low-paid, and which is being used as a bargaining tool to force people to agree to even worse terms than those proposed by the Government. What is clearly being said is, “If you do not agree to much worse terms than you have at present”—although perhaps slightly better terms than those in the Bill—“the terms in the Bill will be what you have.” That is really what the legislation is about.