Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Guy Opperman

Thursday 14th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I am disappointed to hear that news from Aylesbury. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and to invite the bus company in to explain why it is not taking up the Government’s generous offer.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

T4. Earlier this year, the UK Government pledged to fund a bridge repair in the constituency of the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). The Newburgh train station campaign is working to re-establish a train station that will provide a vital transport link. Assuming that strategic funding is not just available to Members of the Conservative party, who can I speak to in order to get that station re-established?

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Guy Opperman

2nd reading
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House, while recognising the extraordinary circumstances of the covid-19 pandemic, declines to give a Second Reading to the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill because it represents a broken manifesto commitment made by the Government at the last General Election, fails to address the impact of the pandemic on the two million pensioners living in poverty and fails to increase key benefits, such as making permanent the uplift to Universal Credit.”

The Government are on track to break yet another of their manifesto promises. It is another example of how this Government are willing to turn their back on people living in poverty—now it is pensioners, but next month it will be those on universal credit.

The Liberal Democrats want Britain to be the best place in which to live and to retire, but, frankly, we all accept that it is far from that. People who have worked hard and paid taxes all their lives deserve a comfortable retirement when the time comes. It was our party that was instrumental in putting the triple lock in place, providing a lifeline to millions of pensioners who had seen increases as derisory and as low as 75p per year.

When pensions were only pegged to price inflation, their real value shrunk to one of the lowest in the developed world. We all deserve to live in dignity, to be able to afford food and heating, and to be able to live a life with some meaning or enjoyment, and reaching retirement age does not and should not change that.

There are more than 18,000 people in my constituency claiming the state pension, which is over 20% of the local population. They have worked, paid taxes, raised families, and built communities, and I want them to know that they are visible. The Conservative party clearly does not feel the same about their local pensioners, with the 20 hardest hit constituencies all being represented by Conservative Members. The Secretary of State’s own constituency is the fifth most affected by this broken manifesto commitment.

We all accept that we have lived in exceptional times over the past 18 months, and that earnings growth this year is out of the ordinary, but the big picture here is that this Government are refusing to take any action to lift any group out of poverty. The refusal to do so highlights the hollowness of the phrase “levelling up”. They are cutting universal credit, taking away vital income from 5.5 million households, and pushing thousands of families further into poverty. They have refused throughout to increase legacy benefits at all, ignoring the needs of recipients who are disproportionately disabled. Technical issues were given as the reason for this, but, 18 months on, a lack of appetite seems to be the more obvious case.

The decision to increase national insurance is a further tax on young people, on working people—those who have already been hit the hardest by the pandemic. We know that people are willing to make sacrifices when it is needed—we have seen that during the pandemic—but a part of that must be seeing that we all follow the same rules. There must be a fairness in what is being asked of us. There cannot be one rule for them and one rule for us, which, sadly, is what we see time and again from this Government.

This Government’s habit of breaking their promises makes me very wary of this Bill. We might be told that this change is just for one year, but they also promised no increase in tax in their manifesto and they have just increased national insurance.

[Guy Opperman]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Lady’s speech. I just want to know whether she agrees with Sir Steve Webb, the esteemed former Pensions Minister, who, for five years, represented her party in this House and who indicated on 16 June that he strongly supported the sort of change that the Government propose tonight, but that she opposes.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. I am grateful to have the opportunity to respond to him, especially as the Secretary of State did not give me that opportunity.

I agree that we have seen extraordinary circumstances over the past 12 months, including significant increases in wages, causing this anomaly, but what this Bill fails to do—I will have this conversation with my friend, Steve Webb—is help those of working age in poverty through maintaining universal credit, or pensioners themselves.

The Bill has only two clauses and five subsections. It fails to address any of the problems with the state pension, or to assess the impact of suspending the triple lock. There are already 2 million pensioners living in poverty, the majority of whom are women and/or from black and Asian communities. This Bill ignores them and the disproportionate impact that suspending the triple lock will have on people already struggling. The promises made by a party in their manifesto matter. It is the essence of the mandate that they claim.

Just last week, during the urgent question on transport, the Transport Secretary welcomed increases in wages and hoped that they continued and were sustained. That is the whole point of the triple lock; it is about helping pensions to keep up with the cost of living.

Women have already been left behind when it comes to the state pension, with those born in the 1950s—the WASPI women—being unfairly penalised by the Department for Work and Pensions’ failure to properly notify them about the change in pension age. Women who had worked hard and planned for retirement suddenly found themselves without either. With women more likely to rely on the state pension than men, this policy is another damaging blow.

Last year, I talked about the importance of the triple lock for intergenerational fairness. This Bill is not just of interest to those of state pension age. Unless we truly trust that this Government will keep their promise—and there is no evidence to show that this will be any different from the other broken promises over the past two years—this will impact everyone. Jobs for life and final salary pensions are a thing of the past. It is harder than it has been in recent memory to get on to the housing ladder. It is fair and right that young people today are able to look ahead to a state pension, but if we return to the days of minimal increases to pensions, they will be impacted, too.

I am asking the House to support the amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats for all the reasons that I have outlined. While there is no doubt that the pandemic has required exceptional measures, this Bill was an opportunity for the Government to support poorer pensioners and to right previous wrongs, and it is an opportunity that they have ignored. Why is there no impact assessment on how this will affect groups already disadvantaged under the pension system? I hope the Minister will address that in his closing remarks. Why do the Government continue to ignore the needs and wants of ordinary people, and why do they think that anyone will trust their word given what has happened over the past few weeks?

The public deserve better than these broken promises, better than this Government, and the 2 million pensioners living in poverty certainly deserve better than this Bill.

Future of Pensions Policy

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Guy Opperman

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) on securing the debate. This autumn has demonstrated that there is a considerable appetite in the House for discussion of pensions policy. We have had the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2020 and a landmark piece of pensions legislation in the Pension Schemes Bill, with amendments yet to be considered in the House of Lords. Not content with all that debate, we now find ourselves, thanks to the hon. Member for Delyn, looking to the horizon of pension policies yet to come.

Of course, that is entirely the right approach, for two reasons. First, pensions are, by their very nature, a long-term product, so the policy decisions we are making now will have an impact quite literally decades down the line. Let us say that someone is in their early 20s, has just started their first permanent job and is making their first pension contributions. They will not be drawing down their pension for another 45 or even 50 years, most likely, so the legislation and regulations that we make now—those, for instance, that are part of the Pension Schemes Bill—will have an effect stretching all the way to 2070 and beyond. That really is long-term policy making.

Secondly, this century poses new challenges of huge proportions. Those challenges of course include automation, an ageing population, with increasing life expectancy—I note the comments of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on that—and the climate emergency. I would not normally choose to quote Donald Rumsfeld, but when we consider the profound and unforeseen impact that a global pandemic has had on our society this year, we have to recognise that it is not just the identifiable factors that we need to be concerned about; it is also the “unknown unknowns”.

An incredibly important matter when it comes to long-term pensions policy is the triple lock. It was a decade ago that the Liberal Democrats helped introduce the triple lock on the state pension, and I pay tribute to the then Pensions Minister and former Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb, who was instrumental in that. The triple lock has been a huge success and an incredibly popular measure: indeed, since its introduction, it has been adopted by all major parties, although I note with concern that there has been some speculation that the Government may look to scrap it in future. I hope that rumours of its demise are greatly exaggerated, because I do think that the triple lock plays a crucial role.

During the debate about the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill in October, I spoke to the issue of intergenerational fairness. That issue has become very clear over the past few months, during which young people have had to put their lives on hold to stop the spread of a virus that does not always pose the same threat to them as it does to older people in our society. Of course, it is young people who will bear the brunt of the current and future economic costs, not only because of the immediate impact on the jobs market that we are seeing, but because they will be saddled with the debt accrued into the future.

Some say that the triple lock is making the gap between the generations grow even further because, on the face of it, a large sum of money is being spent on older people. However, as I made clear during the debate on the uprating Bill, it is increasingly the case that many working-age people are unable to save adequately for their retirement. It is certainly the case that defined-benefit schemes, which many people were historically enrolled in, are being used far less frequently. That all means an increasing reliance on the state pension. As such, it is vital that we make sure the state pension is strong, not only for this generation of retirees but for the next one and the one after that. I continue to urge the Government, as I did during the passage of that Bill, to ensure that the triple lock is retained, now and in the future. We need to ensure a good deal for the generation of people who are currently only starting out in work. The choices we make now will have an impact decades into the future.

However, pensions policy is not just about the long term. As we have heard from other Members, there are many steps that can and should be taken to ensure that pensions work better for people who are about to retire, or who have retired already. Pensioners are feeling real financial impacts now, including the Equitable Life scandal, the situation experienced by the WASPI women and the issues with plumbers’ pensions, which I raised during the debate on the Pension Schemes Bill last month. There is also the fact that many British pensioners overseas have their state pensions frozen, and the Government have not committed to uplifting those pensions, at the very least for the duration of the covid pandemic. This has been a hugely difficult time for many of those pensioners in many different countries. We might just have taken a huge step in relation to pensions through legislation, but these campaigns continue, and it is imperative that the Government actively engage with them. Many of those campaigners are disheartened that the chance they felt they had to resolve those issues through the Pension Schemes Bill was missed, and feel that they remain unheard.

Another issue that I hope the Minister will address is that of married women who have been underpaid their state pension, having not been upgraded to their full pension when their husband reached state pension age. They could potentially be eligible for thousands of pounds in repayment from the Department for Work and Pensions. This is an issue that Steve Webb, whom I mentioned earlier, is working to highlight and resolve. We know that at least 1,900 women have been paid out to, but the Government have not yet said how much money has been paid out in total. We urgently need to know how many women the Government estimate have potentially been underpaid. It is so important that these women are informed as soon as possible that they have been underpaid.

Many Members have talked about pension credit; we need to inform people of what they are due. I hope the Minister will address that in his response, because so far there has not been sufficient clarity from the Government about the scale of this problem and what has been done to address it.

Finally, I come back to the Pension Schemes Bill, because it has not yet been passed. Amendments are still being considered by the Lords, and while the scope of possible changes to the Bill is now limited, I do hope the Government will be willing to engage and potentially to restore some of the additions made to the Bill. As the Minister knows, I am particularly keen to see further clarity on the issue of open defined-benefit schemes, and I hope the Government will continue to engage with my colleague Baroness Bowles on that issue—in fact, I believe they are doing so today.

[Guy Opperman]

On that particular point, the hon. Lady will be pleased to know that, provided this debate ends on time, I will go straight into a meeting with a cross-party group of Lords about clause 123 and open DB. I will be making the point that the Pensions Regulator will be very happy to meet the Lords to engage with them and ensure that they have an opportunity to fully comprehend what the proposed regulations are going to be. I will also make the point that we remain very supportive of DB on an ongoing basis.

Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Guy Opperman

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I would like to speak to amendments 1 and 6, which have been tabled in my name and the names of other Liberal Democrat Members, and in favour of the cross-party amendment 7, tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), as well as to his new clauses 4 and 5. I was very pleased to see new clauses 4 and 5 tabled and I pay tribute to the work of the all-party group on plumbers’ pensions—chaired by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—of which I am a vice-chair.

I have a constituent who was a member of the plumbers’ pension scheme, and the trustees failed to notify him and others that, were they to leave the scheme, he would find himself liable under section 75. He had been a responsible small business employer, enabling all his employees to be part of a pension scheme and to save for their retirement. When he retired and wound up the business, he was not made aware of the consequences by the trustees from a pensions perspective of doing so. That means that through no fault of his own, he is now in a position where, because his business is no longer operating, he cannot apply for current easement schemes and, because his business was not incorporated, he is personally liable for the debt. He is now an elderly man and is being pursued by the trustees. They are threatening to repossess his house and his life savings are at risk. Were that to happen, the sums recovered from him would not even pay off half the outstanding debt.

My constituent told me:

“We are now in the third year of this, and it is taking a toll on my health, and also on the health of my wife.”

If passed, new clause 4 would turn my constituent’s life around. The safeguards are there. His total debt is only a tiny proportion of the total liabilities, and the trustees have determined that the majority of cessation events will be too costly or lengthy to seek recovery. That is one of the issues here: there is an injustice going on that has not received the attention it deserves because relatively few people have been affected by it, but that also presents the opportunity that something can be done and I hope that the Minister will comment accordingly on new clause 4 and look further at this plumbers’ pension issue. It is causing hardship and anxiety for, arguably, an increasingly vulnerable group of people.

I shall now address part 5 and schedule 10 and, in particular, clause 123 on defined-benefit schemes. My colleague in the Lords, Baroness Bowles, tabled the original amendment to clause 123 that would ensure that defined-benefit schemes are treated differently, depending on whether they are open or closed. I pay tribute to Baroness Bowles. Her amendment had cross-party support in the Lords, so it was disappointing that the Government removed it in Committee two weeks ago.

My amendment 1 would reinstate Baroness Bowles’s amendment, and amendment 7 in the name of the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts is a revised version of it, which I have also signed. I did not have the chance to sit on the Bill Committee, but I did follow proceedings and I was encouraged by the Minister’s comments during Committee on open defined-benefit schemes. He said:

“We acknowledge that if such schemes do continue to admit new entrants and do not mature then the scheme will not actually reach significant maturity. We are content that such a scheme retains the same flexibility in its funding and investment strategies that all immature schemes have.”––[Official Report, Pension Schemes Public Bill Committee, 5 November 2020; c. 81.]

I welcome those comments, which imply that open schemes should, and will, be treated differently from closed schemes, in accordance with different investment, liquidity and maturity, and I hope the Minister will be able to recommit to that statement on the Floor of the House today. I urge him to accept either amendment 1 or amendment 7, which would put that commitment on the face of the Bill and provide much needed reassurance for open schemes that have contacted me, and, I am sure, have contacted other Members, in advance of this debate.

We need that reassurance because there is real concern about the regulator’s consultation. Looking at the consultation document, there are places where it looks like the regulator is making the right noises on DB schemes.

[Guy Opperman]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments. I will not have the chance to answer in detail in closing, but I am very happy to endorse, and repeat as if I were to say the exact same words, the very detailed comments I made at Committee as to the way in which open schemes will be treated on an ongoing basis.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the Minister for that intervention, but I would ask him again to consider accepting either amendment 7 or amendment 1, which would put that commitment on the face of the Bill.

We need that reassurance because there is a real concern about the regulator’s consultation. In other places there appears to be a conflation, in that consultation document, of open and closed structures, with references to the same treatment and same risk profile between open and closed schemes. But it is just not possible to have the same risk profile between an open and a closed scheme.