Pensions and Social Security

Steve Webb Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013, which was laid before this House on 28 January, be approved.

[Mr Speaker]

With this we shall consider the following motion, on social security benefits uprating:

That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013, which was laid before this House on 28 January, be approved.

[Steve Webb]

The guaranteed minimum pensions order is a routine and technical order which provides for contracted-out defined benefits schemes to increase their members’ GMPs that accrued between 1988 and 1997 by 2.2%, in line with inflation. I assume that this will be uncontentious. The order paired with this is the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013.

I shall begin with the basic state pension. Despite the tough fiscal context, the Government remain committed to protecting those who have worked hard all their lives, which is why we have stood by our triple lock commitment to uprate the basic state pension by the highest of earnings, prices or 2.5%. This year the third element of our triple lock comes into play for the first time—our 2.5% minimum commitment. That means that we shall be increasing the basic state pension by more than inflation for millions of pensioners.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he has done as pensions Minister to drive through the triple lock, which means that pensioners will get an above-inflation increase this year. The days of 75p increases, which happened under the previous Government, are long gone.

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. He will know that we have set a minimum increase of 2.5%, which is what we are having this year. Under that policy, it would now be impossible for us ever to go back to the days of 75p increases.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the order contains a real-terms cut in the amount of the basic state pension?

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman is well aware that the Government increase benefits in line with inflation in the year to September, as did his Government. He will know that inflation under the consumer prices index in the year to September was 2.2%, and we have increased not in line with inflation, but by more than inflation, at 2.5%.

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

I have obviously dealt with the point, but I am happy to give way again.

[Stephen Timms]

The Minister will have heard today’s announcement that CPI is currently at 2.7%. Last year he claimed that he was introducing a substantial real-terms increase in the level of the basic state pension. On precisely the same terms he used last year, this order has a real-terms cut. Will he confirm that the order contains a real-terms cut in the level of the basic state pension?

[Steve Webb]

I well remember our exchanges last year, and I seem to recall that the right hon. Gentleman rejected that way of measuring things.

Our above-inflation increase will be £2.70 a week, taking the new level of the basic state pension to £110.15 a week. That means that from April 2013 the basic pension is forecast to be around 18% of average earnings. My right hon. and hon. Friends might be pleased to know that that is a higher share of average earnings than at any time in the past 20 years. Our triple-lock commitment means that the average person reaching state pension age in 2012 with a full basic pension can expect to receive an additional £12,000 in basic state pension over the course of their retirement.

Let me turn to additional state pensions, often referred to as state earnings-related pension schemes. This year SERPS pensions will rise by 2.2%, which means that the total state pension increase for someone with a full basic pension and average additional pension will be around £3.33 a week, or £175 a year. Unlike the Labour party, which froze SERPS in 2010, the coalition Government will, for the third year in a row, uprate SERPS by the full value of CPI.

Let me turn to pension credit. As I announced in my statement on 6 December, we have taken steps to ensure that the poorest pensioners will benefit from the effects of our triple lock. Each year the standard minimum guarantee must be increased by law at least in line with earnings. That means that the minimum increase this year would be 1.6%. However, we decided to increase the value of the standard minimum guarantee credit by 1.9% so that single people will receive the full increase of £2.70 a week, which is equal to the increase in the basic state pension, while couples will receive £4.15 a week. Consistent with our approach last year, the resources needed to pay that above-earnings increase to the standard minimum guarantee have been found by increasing the savings credit threshold, which means that those with higher levels of income will see less of an increase.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Although the increase in pension credit is welcome, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that those who do not take up pension credit are enabled to do so? A vast number of people in Northern Ireland—somewhere in the region of 100,000—are not taking advantage of pension credit, and I am sure that the same applies across the whole United Kingdom.

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman is right that non-take-up of pension credit has been a persistent problem. Over the past year or so we tried a pilot scheme in which we took a sample of people we thought, based on our records, might be entitled and put the money in their bank account. We then wrote to them to say, “We’ve put some money in your bank account. Would you like to claim pension credit?” The experiment failed. Incredibly, people did not claim it, or decided that they did not want or need it, or thought that they were not eligible. Even putting money into people’s bank accounts, based on our records, did not succeed. However, I have some good news for the hon. Gentleman. As a consequence of the universal credit reforms, whereby housing benefit for working-age people will be merged with universal credit, we will be merging housing benefit for pensioners with the pension credit.

The reason that is relevant to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that we know that some people claim their housing benefit and not their pension credit, and that some claim their pension credit and not their housing benefit, but when we combine the two in a single payment each group will claim both and we anticipate several hundred million pounds of extra benefit expenditure to low-income pensioners as a result. I think that that will be the most tangible thing that any Government have done in many years.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that that will also save administrative costs to the state, because we want as much saved in such costs as possible?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right that placing the housing element in a single benefit—the pension credit—rather than it being a separate claim through a local authority will reduce administrative costs and increase take-up as well.

On disability benefits, this year the coalition will ensure that those who face additional costs because of their disability and who have perhaps less opportunity to increase their income through paid employment will see their benefits increased by the full value of CPI. Therefore, disability living allowance, attendance allowance, carers allowance and the main rate of incapacity benefit will all rise by the statutory minimum of 2.2% from April 2013, as will the employment and support allowance support group component and those disability-related premiums paid with pension credit and with working-age benefits.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Will the Minister make it absolutely clear for the record that, despite some noise in the media, disability benefits are all going up by the higher rate?

[Steve Webb]

Yes. My hon. Friend is right. The specific benefits for the extra costs of disability are all rising by the full 2.2%.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister tell the House by how much the benefit paid to people in the ESA support group will go up overall under the order?

[Steve Webb]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the main rate of ESA will rise by 1%, which is just over 70p a week, and the addition that people in the support group receive will go up by 2.2%.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

What message can I give to one of my constituents whose doctor has notified me that she has terminal cancer and is on a syringe drive and whose disability living allowance has been taken from her?

[Steve Webb]

I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, whose individual circumstances I do not know. Disability living allowance has not yet been reformed by this Government, so we have changed nothing about DLA. If his constituent believes that she has been wrongly assessed, I hope that she will have his support in appealing against that decision.

On working-age benefits, as the International Monetary Fund has said, strong fiscal consolidation is under way, and reducing the high structural deficit over the medium term remains essential. As we continue to face pressure on our national economy, we have had to take some tough decisions. There was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) has suggested, speculation about benefit freezes. It is true that we cannot afford to be as generous this year as we have been in the past. However, in the exercise of his discretion in the uprating of certain benefits, having regard to the national economic situation, the Secretary of State has found sufficient money to pay a 1% increase to those of working age on the main rate of jobseeker’s allowance or income support, as well as for housing benefit and the main rate and work-related activity component of employment and support allowance.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Has today’s news that inflation is set to stay very high for the next few years encouraged the Minister to rethink in any way this real-terms cut in working benefits?

[Steve Webb]

The rate of CPI has been 2.7% for four consecutive months. We were aware of the level of inflation when we made these judgments about 2013. Clearly, there are things we can do to help ourselves with the cost of living. For example, the cost of petrol is 10p a litre lower than it would have been if we had implemented the previous Government’s escalator; council tax bills, which are a huge cost of living for many people, have been frozen in many places for three years; and people in low-wage work will receive a substantial income tax cut in April. Those measures will all help people with the cost of living.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is interesting that the Minister should mention council tax, because in large parts of the country many working-age people, working and unemployed, will be paying substantial sums in council tax, and that will have a big effect on their standard of living.

[Steve Webb]

The unprecedented three-year freeze in council tax in many areas is a huge boost not only to those on the lowest incomes but particularly to those whom one might describe as not rich and—

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

I wonder if the hon. Lady would allow me to finish replying to her previous point before she intervenes with the next one. The three-year freeze will help particularly those whom I would describe as not rich and not poor—not poor enough to get benefit and not rich enough not to care. We meet them all the time; they have saved a bit, worked hard, and feel penalised. Our freeze will benefit those people in particular.

[Sheila Gilmore]

It may be an unprecedented freeze in England, but it is not unprecedented in Scotland. It is a very regressive form of assisting people, because the higher their level of council tax banding, the more advantage they get from it. Someone who is already in receipt of council tax benefit gets no benefit from the freeze, and the effect on councils is to lead them to raise the cost of many fees and cut services. In fact, therefore, the poorest and most vulnerable do not benefit from a council tax freeze.

[Steve Webb]

In responding to the hon. Lady, I occasionally lose count of the logical flaws in her argument. However, I will take one in particular. The Government have made available for this coming year, 2013-14, an additional £100 million to help local authorities to dampen down the effect of the council tax benefit changes. Many local authorities have reduced the subsidy given on empty homes and on second homes—which are not generally associated with poverty, I would add—and many have damped, or reduced to zero, the impact on council tax. Some Labour authorities have chosen not to do that, which is an unfortunate political decision.

I remind those who might consider voting against the order—the interventions that we have heard suggest that the Opposition are considering it, or perhaps they want to give that impression—that they would be voting against an above-inflation increase in the state pension, a full increase in line with CPI for disability benefit, and any increase in any benefit this coming April.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister will be reluctant to penalise with his uprating measures people who are in employment, so why is statutory maternity pay encompassed within the 1% freeze? Has he seen the letter in The Guardian today from six mums who have written to complain about this measure and point out that having a new baby costs families money?

[Steve Webb]

Statutory maternity pay applies to those who are leaving work to have a baby and who often return to work, and for those in work our income tax cut in April will be a very substantial benefit. It is true that the 1% figure applies to SMP. It also applies to in-work benefits such as tax credits, which are not within the scope of the order. That is a consistent approach, particularly given that many people in work, such as those in the public sector, are also getting a 1% increase.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

The Minister says that we cannot vote against the 1% figure without opposing the uprating of pensions and the rest. That may well be so, and no doubt he is pleased about it, but the fact remains that whether we vote against it or not, some of us feel very strongly about it because we believe that it is hitting the most vulnerable, and I look on it with loathing and contempt. Only a Tory-led Government could carry out such a measure.

[Steve Webb]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s Front Benchers share his loathing and contempt, but they have a vote to cast and they can use it if they want to.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

No, I am going to conclude; there will be plenty of opportunity for people to contribute.

At a time when the nation’s finances remain under real pressure, this Government will be spending an extra £2.8 billion in 2013-14 to ensure that those people who are least able to change their regular income are protected against increases in the cost of living. Of this, about £2.1 billion is for the state pension, including an above-inflation increase for the basic pension; nearly £500 million will go to disabled people and their carers; and nearly £300 million will go to people of working age. We have protected the triple lock, we have helped our poorest pensioners, and we have protected the key benefits for disabled people. Even as we face the need to make savings to rebalance our economy, we have still found money for a 1% increase to help to support those who are not currently in work. I have set out our ongoing commitment to ensuring that even in these difficult times no one is left behind. I commend the orders to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his foresight in pushing for that change. I am delighted that, partly thanks to his work, the previous Government were able to deliver it. It is greatly appreciated by pensioners.

In my view, the triple lock has been a triumph of rhetoric, but a damp squib in reality. One can only hope that the quadruple lock delivers rather more for those following the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill than the triple lock has done, but perhaps we should be a bit kinder to the triple lock. Perhaps we should credit it at least with saving pensioners from the fate of strivers. The order locks in the strivers tax to working-age benefits for the coming years. Strivers are being hammered.

It is worth looking back at what the Minister said last year about working-age benefits. It is hard to believe now, but last year he announced a 5.2% increase in working-age benefits:

“These increases will ensure that the most vulnerable people in society are protected and that those looking for work get the support they need to move into the labour market.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 1046.]

How different is the picture today! After another 12 months of failed economic policy in which the economy has hardly grown and the Government’s forecasts for unemployment and borrowing have risen sharply, the most vulnerable are no longer being protected; they are being hammered and are paying the price for the failure of the Government’s economic policy and the Chancellor’s inability to deliver the steady growth and falling unemployment that he promised.

Let me remind the Minister of something else he said last year. He said that

“there were siren voices from some quarters suggesting that we could not afford, or that we should not go for, this inflation figure. He is absolutely right that the coalition parties decided that it was a priority. That is something that I am proud to be associated with.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 1045.]

I think we can safely assume that he is not proud to be associated with the shabby treatment of working-age people in the social security system. This year, the siren voices have won. This year, the coalition parties have decided that safeguarding strivers is not a priority. This year, and for the next two years, the most vulnerable are being kicked in the teeth. The measures will come into effect at the beginning of April, on the same day as the introduction of the tax cut for everyone earning over £150,000 a year.

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman will have noticed that I did not use the word “strivers”. Will he clarify who he means by “strivers” and who he is excluding from that definition?

[Stephen Timms]

The term “strivers” refers to those who are working, who are often struggling to make ends meet and who are going to find things a good deal harder because tax credits are being uprated by only 1%. That is being done on exactly the same day as every one of the 8,000 people earning over £1 million a year will get a tax cut averaging over £2,000 a week. Let me remind the Minister that that will happen on the same day as the employment and support allowance paid to a single person aged over 25 goes up by 70p a week. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) reminded the House a few minutes ago about the 75p a week pension rise some time ago. This order will give the people I have just described a 70p a week increase, and that is a disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is fair to say that the bedroom tax is increasingly being seen as a hated tax across the country, as its impact becomes clearer and the date on which it will be applied approaches. It will make life a great deal harder for those people who have no option to move into a smaller place because there are no smaller places available in the council or housing association stock.

I commend to the Minister the speech made by the Bishop of Leicester in the other place in the Second Reading debate on the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill on Monday. He said of the Bill:

“It will depress hard-working families even further, remove much needed support for the vulnerable and unable to work, and potentially take us in the wrong direction for a generation, condemning countless children to poverty. It is a proposal that I cannot support.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 February 2013; Vol. 743, c. 471.]

He was speaking for Britain. The Resolution Foundation has pointed out that the measure is a strivers tax, and that well over half the savings from uprating working-age benefits by just 1% over three years will be taken from people in work, because tax credits are being cut in real terms.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) has pointed out that the provisions will hit women particularly hard. The House of Commons Library has calculated that two thirds of those hit will be women. The real-terms cut of £180 to statutory maternity pay has already been dubbed the “mummy tax”. Taking into account all the cuts that will affect a woman during pregnancy and the first year of her baby’s life, including maternity pay, pregnancy support, tax credits and child benefit, the loss adds up to an average of £1,700. So, on the day when the highest paid are getting a massive tax cut and the rich are getting a £3 billion tax giveaway, people who are striving will be hammered.

[Steve Webb]

The right hon. Gentleman’s words in Hansard will show that he is very concerned about all this. Will he therefore tell the House whether it is his intention to reverse any of these measures?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I had not intended to speak this evening, but my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has somewhat inspired me. He spoke on a subject that I want to say one or two things about. It is extremely saddening that we are taking both orders together, because we on the Opposition Benches—[Interruption.] Well, we can support one order, but we have severe difficulties with the other. We will see what happens.

[Steve Webb]

Just to clarify, for the convenience of the House, we have three hours to talk about both orders. One is uncontentious, so the hon. Gentleman can talk to his heart’s content about the other and vote against it if he wants to.

[Mr Brown]

We are taking one vote, and the Minister knows that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gregg McClymont]

I am still waiting for the hon. Gentleman to confess that he was absolutely wrong to suggest that this is an above-inflation increase. That leads to some questions about the ability of the Liberal Democrats to devise economic and financial policy when they do not know the current rate of inflation and how it relates to the basic state pension.

[Steve Webb]

Understandably, the hon. Gentleman would like to be sitting where I am sitting. If he was, by how much would he have put the pension up?

[Gregg McClymont]

The Minister is determined to tease out from the Opposition what will be in our next manifesto. Our position is clear, and he is obviously trying to deflect attention from this real-terms cut in the pension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gregg McClymont]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Chancellor thought that he could play clever politics and draw dividing lines between different sections of society, but he did not take it into account that this would hit those in work above all else. I am afraid that he has been too clever by half.

Let us be clear. One of the groups that will be particularly hard hit will be women. House of Commons Library analysis is clear that two thirds of those hit overall by the real-terms cut in benefits and tax credits are women.

[Steve Webb]

indicated dissent.

[Gregg McClymont]

The Minister shakes his head, but that is House of Commons Library research.

There has built up a picture of a Government who, having failed miserably on the economy, want to make working people and those seeking work pay the price for their economic failure. Labour’s alternative is clear: get Britain back to work, introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee and bring down the unemployment bill—the price of failure that the country is paying.

To conclude, the proposals in the order for working-age benefits are an affront to hard-working people—although an increase is better than no increase, of course. If the Government want to plug the hole in their failing economic plan, they should cancel their tax cut for millionaires this April, not hit millions of working people on modest incomes. That is the reality of the situation. The pension proposals are, of course, worth having. Pensioners depend on these upratings every year to maintain their standard of living, so I will urge my hon. Friends to abstain on this order, but to campaign for a new set of economic policies as we move towards 2015.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

This has been an interesting debate. We have heard heartfelt contributions from the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) and for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), the latter of whom described his own experience of childhood poverty. I would describe those two hon. Gentlemen—I am not sure the hon. Lady would accept this term—as socialists and so would clearly not be where we are, but would be taxing the rich far, far more to avoid the sorts of things we are having to do to reduce the deficit. Their Front-Bench team do not share their view, however, so although I respect their position that they would rather tax the rich, that is not the position of their Front-Bench team.

The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) was the classic personification of Labour now—a vacuum where there should be a political party. When asked what they would do now, both he and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Gregg McClymont) said, “Well, if this had been done, we might have done that, and in some years, we will produce a manifesto, but we’re not saying.” The hard-working folk who write Hansard could have simply inserted, “Vacuous twaddle here”. The House has a right to know what the official Opposition would do, but answer came there none.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), among others, asked for a cumulative impact assessment. Occasionally, when the Government produce such figures, they are met with some scepticism. The Institute for Fiscal Studies chose to analyse the cumulative impact of all the fiscal consolidation from the start of this Parliament through to the end, and it has stated this month in its “Green Budget” that

“those on the very highest incomes have clearly been hit the hardest”.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Finish the sentence.

[Steve Webb]

I will finish the sentence. It goes on to say

“when looking at the fiscal consolidation as a whole.”

In other words, when looking at everything, which is what we were asked to do.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The other half of what the IFS said referred to the people in the lowest income deciles and the losses that they will incur. The cash reduction for people on the highest incomes will not impinge on their well-being in anything like the same way as these measures, including the 1% increase, will impinge on the poorest.

[Steve Webb]

In fact, the IFS figures are based on the percentage increases and, as we have been reminded repeatedly in the debate, the cash amounts for the very highest income earners are far higher for any given percentage figure. So, even taking percentages instead of cash amounts, the highest earners have, in the IFS’s words, been “hit the hardest”.

[Ian Murray]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

No, I want to make some progress.

The right hon. Member for East Ham referred to the triple lock and the increase of 2.5% over inflation, compared with 2.2%, as derisory. I remind him that the extra 0.3% cost the taxpayer £150 million. I remember the funny-money days of Labour when £150 million was considered a mere rounding error. He dismisses it as derisory. When his party was in office, it was borrowing £150 billion a year, so I appreciate that for him £150 million is small change, but I still have the naive feeling that that amount is a lot of money. He and others derided our triple lock as though it were a trifle and of no consequence, but had Labour implemented the triple lock between 1997 and now, we would be spending an additional £3 billion on the state pension. So if Labour had applied the triple lock that he derides as inconsequential throughout their term in office, we would be spending £3 billion a year more on pensions. But perhaps he thinks that that sum is derisory, and a frippery, as well.

We have also been hearing about strivers. This is the classic dog-whistle politics of the Opposition. They accuse us of trying to divide people, yet they suddenly divide people—[Interruption.] It is not our side that has used that language.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It was your Prime Minister.

[Steve Webb]

The Opposition have tried to divide people into “strivers” and “somebody else”. I am not sure who the “somebody else” is—a non-striver, perhaps. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) is shouting out, but he is the man who said in his conference speech that Labour was on the side of the strivers, not the shirkers. We know who uses that language.

Why is it necessary to have the fiscal consolidation? It is because of the Labour party’s debts. There was £150 billion of borrowing in the final year of the last Labour Government. Labour takes no responsibility for that but, had the previous Chancellor’s plans been put into operation, it would have had to implement substantial spending cuts on public sector pay—which it has finally now agreed—and on benefits. Have we heard a single suggestion from the Opposition today on how they would make savings? They simply oppose every cut, pretend to be on the side of the poor, and never accept responsibility for how we got into this mess in the first place.

[Ian Murray]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

No.

A number of people have said that we are the seventh richest country in the world, in terms of our gross national product per head, but we are of course also the country that was brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the last Labour Government. That is what we have had to deal with.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway mentioned people having their disability-related benefit reassessed. I would gently remind him that reassessing the millions of people on incapacity benefit, many of whom had been parked on benefit for a decade or more, was begun, rightly, by the last Labour Government. That process has been carried on. That is why people are being reassessed. We think it right not to park people on incapacity benefit for decades, only for them to retire and find that they have no pension either. So the reassessments are right. I entirely accept the point that they have to be done well, but they were begun under the last Government and they continue under this one.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Surely the Minister recognises that for people going through assessments it is almost like a revolving door. People with long-term and fluctuating conditions are losing benefits, eventually getting them reinstated, and then six months pass and they are back losing their benefits again. The system is not working for about 40% of people who have to go through a process time after time, making them even more ill.

[Steve Webb]

The Government fully accept that Labour’s work capability assessment was not working when we came into office, which is why we commissioned Professor Harrington to undertake a series of reviews. We have implemented his recommendations to make the test better, and that will continue under a new assessor.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

No. We have heard a lot of handwringing from the Opposition Front Bench, but no alternative proposition. We have been told that this measure will be devastating and cost the poorest people in the land billions of pounds, so surely we can have a commitment from the Labour party to reverse it. I think the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said this measure was “egregious”, and we have heard how evil and unkind it is, so the Labour party is clearly committed to reversing it. However, those on the Front Bench know that they will weep crocodile tears and try to persuade people that they actually care about this stuff, but they will not find a penny to reverse any of it. That is the truth.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

No, I am reaching a conclusion.

We are bringing forward regulations that will increase the pension by more than the rate of inflation, taking it to the highest share of average earnings for more than 20 years. We are uprating key disability benefits by the rate of inflation, and ensuring that even in these straitened times we are able to increase benefits for people of working age. I commend the order to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013, which was laid before this House on 28 January, be approved.

Resolved,

That this House takes note of and approves the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013, which was laid before this House on 28 January.—(Steve Webb.)