Winter Fuel Payment

Saqib Bhatti Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I congratulate it and I thank my hon. Friend, and probably hon. Members on both sides of the House, who I am sure have engaged with local charities in supporting their pensioners in the months that have gone by.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

The Minister is being generous in giving way, and I am sure that he will continue to be. He talked about making responsible choices. According to Government analysis, 100,000 pensioners are being pushed into poverty. Is that a responsible choice?

[Torsten Bell]

The poverty assessment, which we provided to the Work and Pensions Committee, does not take into account any increase in pension credit take-up, which I will come to shortly. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), talked about absolute pensioner poverty—the kind of poverty that should be falling every year as an economy grows. But relative poverty—a form of poverty that we look at—rose under the last Administration. Opposition Members may not like to hear this, but relative pensioner poverty rose by 300,000 under the last Government. I just gently say that when it comes to pensioner poverty, we have more to do—I take the hon. Gentleman’s point seriously—but the record of recent years is not one of success on that front.

Everyone in this House knows the economic and fiscal context—the economic stagnation of the past decade, visible in flatlining wages, collapsing public services and strained public finances. Every economist and every person in the country knows that Britain has lived through an unprecedented economic failure. In a challenging fiscal environment, difficult choices are unavoidable. The Government have set fiscal rules and we will stick to them. But, as some older Members may remember, prudence is for a purpose: to support a growing economy that benefits everyone. It is the prerequisite for rescuing our public services and rising living standards for workers, but also for pensioners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Jones]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The triple lock is a serious commitment that we are utterly committed to, and it will make a difference to every single pensioner in this country—far more than trying to pretend that we do not face the systemic problems that this country faces.

[Saqib Bhatti]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Louise Jones]

I was going to go back to GB Energy, but why not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Saqib Bhatti]

The hon. Member is being very generous with interventions. She talked about fairness in pay. Those pensioners also worked all through their lives and also deserve fairness. What is fair about the hundreds of millions being given to train drivers as opposed to what has been taken away from pensioners? What is fair about the £18 billion, or whatever the figure is, being spent on the Chagos islands, compared with what pensioners deserve?

[Louise Jones]

What is fair is a 4.1% rise in the state pension and a 5.5% to 6% rise for our soldiers, teachers and nurses, and I will say that as many times as I need to say it.

Many people in this country have been grappling with skyrocketing energy bills, which have caused real poverty. Those bills have skyrocketed largely because we are at the mercy of international markets, so it is vital that we take back sovereign control of our energy and energy prices, and GB Energy is a vital part of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alberto Costa]

The hon. Lady has raised that point already and erroneously said that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) had misspoken. The only person who has misspoken this afternoon, and continues to do so, is the hon. Lady. The Conservatives have been very clear. Last year, when the Labour Government chose to give train drivers an exorbitant pay increase, we highlighted that that was a poor decision precisely because it had a negative impact on the most vulnerable in society, the very people we are speaking about today—pensioners.

[Saqib Bhatti]

My hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech and excellent points. It is about not just the pay rises for train drivers, but the fact that they were not asked for any savings in return. In fact, the only people who were asked to make a sacrifice were the poor pensioners.

[Alberto Costa]

Indeed. My hon. Friend continues to make very sensible points. I am sure pensioners watching this debate will, once and for all, see that in 14 years of Conservative government we had protecting the most vulnerable and weakest in society at the forefront of our mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Ferguson]

I am about to get to the thrust of my argument, if the hon. Lady would not mind.

We have been talking about the winter fuel allowance and money being taken from pensioners, which is a serious point. I wish to talk briefly about what happened four years ago, when, in this place, the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2021 was passed. That was a very serious decision that the previous Government had to take. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) for some of the enlightening research that he commissioned from the House of Commons Library. In 2021, the Conservative Government made a decision, following the unusual turbulence in the employment market after covid, that the triple lock would become, for one year only, a double lock. The Conservatives, who are very keen to say that they are the party of the triple lock, turned it into a double lock. I think that it is fair to say—as many Members did at the time—that it was a very unusual time in the market—

[Saqib Bhatti]

Will the hon. Member give way on that point?

[Mark Ferguson]

I would be happy to give way, but I am coming to the thrust of my argument.

As a result, the state pension did not increase by 8.3%, as it could have done that year. It instead rose by the absolute minimum of 2.5%, and that has had cumulative effects. In year one, pensioners were £470 worse off. In year two, they were £520 worse off. And in year three, they were £560 worse off. As I want to be reasonable in this debate, I make it clear that the Labour party did not support the 8.3% rise, because we believed, as a reasonable Opposition who went on to win the general election, that it was not within the bounds of what would normally be considered a rise in wages and was because of the impacts of covid. However, Members on the Labour Benches—I was sadly not one of them at the time—supported a Lords amendment that asked for the covid-specific elements to be stripped out to allow the Conservative party to maintain their manifesto commitment to a triple lock. That was voted down by the Conservative party.

Labour Members have been attempting to be reasonable and considered in opposition and in government about the impacts of spending on pensioners. Conservative Members are arguing as if they have never had to take difficult decisions that would have impacts on pensioners. We have all had to take difficult decisions, and we will all continue to do so.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for getting to the thrust of his argument. He keeps referring to market turbulence, but I think he means the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. We have repeatedly said how difficult governing is. The fact is that we would have made different choices from the ones that the current Government are making right now.

[Mark Ferguson]

I thank the hon. Member for his point, but I feel like he has not really listened to what I was saying. The point that I was making was that, at the time, the Government of the day had an opportunity to strip out the covid effects. I have already used the phrase “covid effects” and I have referred to the once-in-a-generation pandemic—my Lord, did we not all live through it? None of us has forgotten about it. But instead of stripping out the covid effects, the Conservative Government argued that that would be too difficult, so, instead, there was a 2.5% rise. That had an effect on pensioners, but I do not feel that the Conservative party has had the same reckoning with that difficult decision that we on Labour Benches have had with the decisions that we have taken.