Pensions Reform

I think I can assume from that that the hon. Gentleman generally supports the reforms that we are making through the White Paper; I genuinely welcome that, by the way. His point about consensus is well made, and we certainly intend to establish and maintain the widest and deepest consensus that we can. However, an important part of that has to be a grown-up approach to affordability issues. He cannot just brush those away, as he did by suggesting at the beginning of his remarks that affordability is not an issue. It is absolutely fundamental. May I correct the hon. Gentleman on one or two things that he said that are not right? I have only a few minutes, so I shall try to keep to the point. He said that means-testing would be extended over the next six years. That is not true. He will have the opportunity in due course to look more carefully at the White Paper, and he will see that the changes we are making to the savings credit fix will prevent that from happening. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the administration of the financial assistance scheme needs to be improved, and we will set out how we intend to do that. His remarks on public sector pensions reflect two problems that he has. We all remember the Conservative party saying before the election that it had no plans at all to change any aspect of public sector pensions. Now, with the election behind him, he is waving his plans to change the pension schemes of the nurses, the teachers, the doctors and the local government workers. People will draw their own conclusions about his consistency in doing that. More fundamentally, the hon. Gentleman is confusing occupational pension age with the state pension age. It is simply not true that people in the public sector will have the benefit and advantage that he claims. In general, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for our proposals, but I would be remiss if I did not, finally, correct some of his description of the record. He described the pensions system as being pretty well perfect when his party left office and we took office. I do not think that that is what many pensioners would say. There was no help for the poorest pensioners, and there was pension mis-selling on a scandalous scale. There was no scheme protection at all for people whose pension schemes collapsed. Anyone who thinks that is a credible record does not understand the reality of pensions policy.