Support for Pensioners

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Blake Stephenson

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson]

I do not think they are listening either, but let’s try. The Minister for Employment has told me previously about the Government’s desire to help pensioners reduce their energy bills, and I agree. There was a flagship policy in Labour’s manifesto, but good intentions alone are not enough to reduce energy bills. The Government’s Great British Energy pet project will not produce any energy. It will not employ anything near the number of people they said it would, and its boss cannot say when it will reduce energy bills. For many pensioners, that simply will not be soon enough. It is not just the Government’s GB Energy plans that are a mirage. They want to improve energy efficiency, but they cannot say where their warm home grants will be spent. They cannot say how many of the worst impacted properties off the energy grid are listed buildings that would need more specialist support.

All the energy wasted on plans that will not bring down energy bills could have been better spent taking real steps to reduce them. While the Government have been talking about reducing energy bills, they have gone up by £170. Our pensioners deserve better. They deserve real, focused action to drive up energy efficiency and drive down energy bills.

From the private sector I know that the old axiom “what gets measured gets done” is more than a cliché. The Government need to start taking seriously getting every single person eligible for pension credit signed up for it. To do that, they need to set out a credible, measurable plan with targets that we can all hold them to account on. Our pensioners deserve better. They deserve a real focus to make sure that the most vulnerable pensioners get the help they need. Getting them that help will also help the Government in their mission to grow the economy.

Independent Age found that spending an additional £2.1 billion on pension credit for all eligible pensioners would save the NHS and social care around £4 billion. That is extra money to spend on the Government’s priorities—growing the economy and delivering better public services while protecting the most vulnerable pensioners. We must also go further to ensure that the Government are able to support both the pensioners of today and the pensioners of tomorrow. People need confidence and certainty in pensions to plan. That is a lesson we must learn from the winter fuel fiasco, and indeed from the legacy of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. Politicians cannot continue to promise things that cannot be delivered. We have a duty in this place to deliver the things we promise. That means ensuring that we put the state pension on a long-term sustainable footing with a plan that looks to the future.

During this Parliament we must clearly communicate to the young people starting work now the support that they can expect to receive from the state when they retire, so that from their first days in work young people can start to plan for a comfortable retirement. We must get pensions reform right—I think the Minister will agree with that—so that young people have good choices available to them as they build financially secure futures. In doing so, we can build greater financial resilience so that the next generation of pensioners, and those that come after, will never have to worry about choosing between heating and eating again. To do anything else would be a dereliction of the duty we have been entrusted with by our constituents.

The Government promised pensioners that they would deliver for them. Instead, they have chosen to balance the books on the backs of people who cannot simply turn around and go back to work, and who cannot find an extra £50 behind the sofa to turn on the heating this week. Although the Government can hide behind shameful, politically driven characterisations of some of the poorest in our society as millionaire pensioners to justify snatching away vital support, pensioners know the truth. Labour were elected on a promise to make pensioners’ lives easier; they have done the opposite. Over the next four years we all have a duty to do better for the pensioners of today and the pensioners of tomorrow. I hope that the Government will get a grip quickly and rise to that challenge.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak in the debate.