Superannuation Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The Minister will know that I wrote to the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 21 July to set out the reasons why I cannot support this Bill. I have to say that I have not changed my mind in the intervening weeks or during the course of this debate. However, notwithstanding the fact that I will not be supporting the Bill, I appreciated the way in which the Minister presented it and the moderation of his tone in some remarks. Given that we are short of time, I shall cut straight to the chase and set out the reasons why I cannot support the Bill. The debate about private and public is the wrong debate. It is not even comparing apples and pears: it is more like trying to compare bananas with Brazil nuts. There is no comparison. I have been in the private sector all my life. I have never had a pension or redundancy terms, and I have always managed to earn a considerable amount of money. I knew what I was getting into. When I signed on for this place, I knew that I would experience a severe reduction in my pay, but that I would get a pension and redundancy terms, although of course the latter are not now so good—[Laughter.] Hey, we will keep working on that.

The point is that people take into account what they will receive in certain situations when they take a job. There may not be a legal contract, but I believe that there is a moral contract between the state and its employees. To put it in human terms, I have people in my constituency who work in the Forestry Commission, for the Department for Work and Pensions—although sadly that office was closed by the last Government despite being one of the most productive and absence-free in the country—and for HM Revenue and Customs in an office scheduled for closure in 2013. The one thing that all those people have been able to count on is that when the Gershon axe fell, they had a cushion between them and penury. In particular, I think of one employee who said to me, “Well, I took out my mortgage based on the fact that if I lost my job I could pay off the mortgage. If this Bill goes through the way it is written, I will have to sell my house.” That is the human reality of this.

Many of the people who have gone into the public sector have considerable qualities, had a vocational desire to be in the public service and have forgone the ability to earn more money in the private sector. Part of their consideration for doing that was the terms and conditions available.

Companies are different because they have a top line, and that can be driven to make more profit and expand further. The last thing that any of us wants to see is an ever-expanding public service. We would like to control it and keep it as cost efficient as possible while delivering the service. It is therefore a wholly different model to driving a top line and delivering a profit. It is right that the famous six times salary provisions—I suspect that those are few in number—and those at the higher-paid end should be reformed, but I am concerned that in fact the low paid in my constituency will bear the brunt, as will those who are coming to the end of their career and have no chance or ability to find another job. I want a scheme that will genuinely offer some help and succour to those at the bottom end of the scale.

I have a final suggestion for the Minister. He probably will not reply to it, but he can take it away for the negotiations to come. If the Government want a cap of £50,000, fine, but they should keep the current terms. That is a progressive way to do it, because the people at the bottom would be very generously looked after and the people at the top would pay most. Let us try that for a change.