Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Steve Webb

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have taken forward plans introduced by the previous Government for automatic enrolment into workplace pensions, so that as people are working for longer, they can still retire on decent pensions, through more workplace saving.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

Everybody recognises that increasing age has an impact on the funding of pension schemes, but does the Minister accept that there is a huge difference between a population such as the one that I represent, in which life expectancy is some 10 years less for males and roughly the same for women, and those populations with the highest life expectancy in the country? Simply increasing the state retirement age has an unfair impact on communities such as mine.

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and it is one that we are aware of. However, he will be encouraged to learn that in the past decade, life expectancy for both manual workers and non-manual workers, for example, has risen by two years for men. Although there are still differences, both groups are seeing improvements in life expectancy.

Housing Benefit

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Steve Webb

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd]

I think that that was nearly the apology I sought, although it was not quite the apology that my constituents were entitled to hear from the hon. Gentleman, who supports this coalition. It was not quite the apology needed by those who will lose significant sums of money and will be forced to absorb that loss by not being able to spend their money on other things.

[Steve Webb]

I think the hon. Gentleman’s own manifesto pledged this precise policy.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am talking about the Minister’s policy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) made it clear what a Labour Government would have done. That was clear also from the statements of the then Secretary of State, and it was very different from the current Government’s proposals. The proposed income loss is not something that I recognise from any Labour manifesto.

The income loss will be significant for those in one, two or three-bedroom houses. In my constituency, for example, 8,000 people face an income loss of £12 to £14 a week. That sum may be trivial to a Minister or Secretary of State, but £12 to £14 is a significant part of the disposable income of somebody on housing benefit or on benefits more generally. The House ought not to countenance taking away that amount of money. It penalises the most vulnerable people in our society to prop up the Government’s policies. That is not scaremongering; it is a disgrace. Ministers and their supporters should recognise that.

There is another aspect of the proposals that we should not countenance. The Secretary of State made a long and complicated speech, which gave no comfort whatever to those in my constituency who will lose money. It gave no comfort to those who will potentially lose their homes. It gave no comfort because the right hon. Gentleman is far more concerned with the polemic of his speech than with the reality of human beings who will lose out in respect of both housing and their finances.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and others on the Government Benches will think again, particularly about some of the most difficult aspects of their proposals. There are parts of them which, with proper care and attention, we could all begin to agree with. The problem, at least in part, is the ridiculous speed of their implementation and the lack of acceptance of the impact that they will have. Were the Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that the Government are prepared to look again at the speed of their implementation, we might have a basis for real debate.

The worry among my constituents is that the proposals are driven, first, by concerns of budgetary restraint—the battle that the Secretary of State fought with the Chancellor and lost—and secondly, although this is a claim that I do not make against the Secretary of State, by the apparent desire among some of his Back Benchers to penalise the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. That rhetoric has come through in some of the debate.