Treasury and Work and Pensions

Certainly not; I am very happy where I am. Leaving aside the small issue of the colossal cost of Iraq—I do not intend to address that this evening, having done so only recently—the Chancellor has been spared, as we have been spared, some of the big economic shocks that derailed previous Labour and Conservative Governments. Yes, the oil price has been a difficulty, but we have not had a devaluation. Yes, conflict has cost the country a great deal of money, but overall the economy has been quite benign, comparatively speaking, and quite successful. Against that backdrop, we can have a sensible debate, even if I notice that Lord Rees-Mogg has turned his attention in his column today to what we do when there is a collapse in the housing market. I have not studied his article in detail, but if that is the force of his argument and if he is predicting that, the Chancellor can probably be well assured—given the predictive qualities of that column over many years on many issues—that it is not going to happen. Given the quite encouraging economic backdrops and the Chancellor’s good intentions for social justice—I do not deny his good intentions on these broad policy strata—there have nevertheless been many disappointments. Without any shadow of a doubt, one such is the continuing problem of tuition fees and the disincentive effect that common sense suggests it must be having on the aspirations of some young people from lower income backgrounds who want to go on to tertiary education. What I find so ironic is that even when Ministers have justified their policy for England and Wales, they have readily acknowledged that they have not begun to attack the broader funding dilemmas of the UK university sector as a whole, which were well touched on by the chairman of the Conservative policy review, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). It seems to me that we are not solving the big problem, while loading in many disincentives for people who cannot be helped. I hope that in the different devolved context, the Chancellor might yet come to see the merits of the policy in Scotland. Indeed, my party colleagues are now pledging in the context of next May’s elections to take the more generous policy even further forward, as it acts well. My second plea relates to some of the ironies of social policy affecting our older citizens. The demography is such that we know that we now have a more active older citizenry, yet the complexities of the operation of pension policy and tax and benefits policy mean that the physical well-being and good will of old people is not being utilised as much as it could be. As we look to developments in social policy for the rest of this Parliament, I hope that we will take account of the opportunities that exist. It seems a shame that greater social flexibility does not lead to more flexibility whereby older people in their 50s and 60s may dip in and out of the labour market. Perhaps they no longer want or have to work full-time, but want to work part-time without the system operating against their interests. Much more could be done. Over a number of years, Government and parliamentary rhetoric from all parties has seemed to encourage use of the experience that older people bring to the labour market, but what else are we doing? We seem to be presiding over the wholesale demolition of local sub-post offices, and for which group of people does that cause the most anxiety? What disincentive is that for active citizens who do not have the access that they would wish to enjoy to a wide range of services? More imaginative policies could help, but they are not adequately dealt with in the Queen’s Speech. At the other end of the age spectrum, the Government have pledged to look again at the system of child support. I am sure that we are all often or occasionally asked the question of what vote we most regret having cast during our time in Parliament. In my case, it is a vote that I never cast—none of us did. There was an all-party agreement that the principle behind the establishment of the Child Support Agency was a good one. Without any rigour being brought to bear on the matter, we ended up with something that entered into the realms of retrospection and became more of a cash cow for the Treasury, rather than tackling what it was supposed to tackle—the social injustice of, mainly, men not being around and failing to live up to their financial responsibilities to the women and children whom they had probably walked away from. It was a terrible error in which all three UK parties were complicit, and it has gone on under successive Governments. I hope that the problem can be tackled more successfully this year, although, as we have argued for a number of years, it is hard to understand how meaningful reform of the CSA, so long as it continues to be structured as the CSA, will lead to the solution that we all want. Would it not be better to put it properly within the Inland Revenue system, rather than continuing with a free-standing agency that no amount of tampering and tinkering can improve? Perhaps the Minister could indicate in his reply just where the Government’s thinking is up to, because even the Government have begun to allude to the fact that they might want to scrap the CSA completely. I do not what the detail of the proposal in the Queen’s Speech will prove to be.