Social Security

That is true, but it is why it is all the more shameful and sad that the Government have squandered the unparalleled opportunity presented by the transformed economy that they inherited and have let down the people who most need help. The Minister used the interesting word ““consensus””. I have been in the House only since last May, and I try not to be cynical, but whenever I hear a Minister use that word I know that he is presiding over a system that is chaotic and failing. That is why, in a desperate bid to shore up his weakening political position, he uses that word to seek the support of the Opposition. However, the good news from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds is that the Conservative party is always prepared to work for the good of the most vulnerable people. We will work to achieve consensus to support them and give them the dignity of work. People want dignity, not means-testing. I am nervous of touching on the new deal but shall do so only in passing and certainly less than the Minister did. Only 15 per cent. of people aged more than 25 who were out of work when the so-called successful new deal was introduced—that is, only one person in seven—have returned to work and so no longer need to claim benefits. Six out of every seven benefit claimants have been failed by that enormously expensive and bureaucratic programme. I welcome the Conservative party’s continuing commitment to programmes that will help and support people and get them into work. In contrast to what too often amounts to political posturing among Labour Members, I do not even mind if we keep the new deal name. That is a matter of indifference to me, as long as we move away from the politics of failure and get all those people still languishing out of work back into employment. That is what the Conservative party is about. That is why we transformed the economy, and that is the opportunity that I hope that we will take on again when we next form the Government. The Minister referred to the number of children in poverty. He will be aware, although he is no longer in his place, that the percentage of children experiencing persistent low income—those in the unhappy state of remaining below 60 per cent. of median household income in at least three out of four years—was 16 per cent. in 1996–97 and remained at 16 per cent. for the following three years to 1999–2000. We need to recognise that far too many children still live in poverty and that the Government have not delivered the transformation that they promised. I hope that we will see fewer eye-catching initiatives and more hard work to make the systems that we already have work better. When we have a Conservative Government, we will make the systems work better. We will be less interested in headlines and more interested in reducing poverty for those with least. The Minister’s words on pensions were hardest to take. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds said, Labour’s first Minister with responsibility for welfare reform said last year that when Labour came to power we had one of the strongest pension systems in Europe. Now we have one of the weakest. That is a searing indictment of the Government’s failure. They have removed opportunity from hard-working people and replaced it with means-testing. I have yet to meet a constituent, whether from the far left like so many Labour Members who rebel against the Government, or from the right, or of no known political persuasion, who wishes to spend their life working hard and paying tax in order to end up on means-tested benefit. They do not want to have to fill in 24-page forms to get pension credit or 12-page forms to get their council tax benefit. When I attended the Hornsea pensioners annual Christmas lunch, I sat beside an upstanding, hard-working, socially contributing and economically successful member of the community who, in his old age, has, because of the Government’s £5 billion raid on pensions, ended up in need of means-tested benefits in order to live properly—[Interruption.] Ministers may laugh at the predicament of hard-working, decent people who are forced into relying on means-tested benefits at the end of a life in which they have suffered no ill-luck and no great illness. They consider themselves successful members of our society. They have always worked, they brought up their children and they tried to do the right thing. This Government have made such people feel like beggars from the state. The gentleman whom I sat next to at Christmas lunch told me that he had seen adverts saying, ““It’s yours: claim it””. So, he filled out all the forms and sent them off. By return, he was told that his building society accounts had not been sent in original form and was asked to supply every last one, even one that had £80 in it. He told me that he chucked the lot in the bin. The 1.5 million people in the same situation deserve better, but they have been let down by a Government who are addicted to means-testing instead of providing dignity for people in their old age. Age Concern estimates that more than 2 million retired people are living in households with incomes below the Government’s official poverty line. I would have thought that Labour Members would be campaigning vociferously on behalf of women, who benefit least from the current system. We know that fewer of the recently retired have money coming in from an occupational pension. We also know that 1 million people have seen their occupational pension schemes wound up—more than 60,000 schemes—because of the policies of this Government, who have raided pensions to the tune of £5 billion a year. That is not a modern, active and inclusive welfare state. For Ministers to persist in saying that it is nothing short of a deception of the British people, and I hope that it will be increasingly recognised as such. Pensioners, people on incapacity benefit and people on the new deal—in other words, some of the most vulnerable people in our society—are not well served by the benefits uprating today. They are being let down. The basic state pension, for people who have contributed all their lives, was 21 per cent. of average earnings when this Government came to power, but it is now just 15.9 per cent. That is the legacy that this Government will leave.