Treasury and Work and Pensions

That is not what happened in practice in the many cases that I have been involved in. The other major plank in the work and pensions proposals is pension reform. The vision of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru is different from that of the Government. On pensions, the Government have taken the route of suggesting—I would hardly class this as a promise—that it might be possible to restore the link between pensions and earnings, but that we all need to work for longer. The problem with that approach is that it does nothing to make up for the fact that pensions have fallen further and further behind since the link between pensions and earnings was first broken by the Conservatives. Restoring the link at some future date will not deal with that, which is why we have proposed a citizen’s pension as the way forward.