Treasury and Work and Pensions

Let me give a specific example. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone)—I was about to call him my hon. Friend because he is one of my neighbours—mentioned unemployment figures. Those started to come down very quickly because the windfall tax on privatised utilities went into the new deal, which the Conservatives have opposed consistently right down the line. The new deal has been very successful in getting people, particularly lone parents, into work and, for the first time, turning around the figures for lone parents out of work so that an increasing number are now in work. Even the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) would have to accept that at this stage of the Tory Government we had already had a catastrophic recession and were heading for a second one. Against that background, some of the statistics looked good. The figures on productivity and public services looked good at a time when grass cutters had to be paid only £1.20 an hour because they could be shipped up from Kent into London to work for rates that no one else would work for. The Conservatives have never really boasted about this, but even the statistics on international development looked good because the amount given was a proportion of gross national income at a time when GNI was going down rather than up. Nevertheless, I urge my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary not to think that it is worth having a massive recession just to improve some statistics to which the Conservatives like to turn. My constituents have enjoyed an amount of security and stability as a result of the sound economy. People tend to take it for granted that they have been able to pay their mortgages, while those with small businesses have been able to manage them. Yes, they have slightly more complex tax forms, but that goes with people having tax credits and other proper support mechanisms that have been delivered by the Government and have kept people out of poverty. The pensions system is another aspect of long-term security that we must ensure that we get right. The welcome proposals heralded in the Queen’s Speech will be extremely important for my constituents. When I first became an MP, I held special advice surgeries in pensioners’ sheltered housing estates where I was confronted by elderly women who were destitute—the amounts that they were living on were unspeakable. Most of them had worked for most of their adult lives and perceived that they had had two jobs because they had been looking after families as well. I remember getting a letter from a lady who berated me for comments that I had made about child care. She said: ““That is complete rubbish. People should look after their own children, as my husband and I always did. I stayed at home while he worked, and when he came home he looked after the children and I went out to work.”” She had been working for all her adult life but still did not get a pension because the hours did not fit, she had paid the married women’s stamp, and so on. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions Reform is here. His proposals to deal with pensioner poverty among women are extremely important and will be welcome to people in my constituency. I also congratulate the Fawcett Society on the campaign that it has run and the lobbies and information that it has provided in taking the issue forward. Women pensioners have faced particular problems and have been hit in many different ways. First, they do not get the state pension. That is why I have always disagreed with those who say that we should simply increase the basic state pension because that is what pensioners need. Only 17 per cent. of women who work get the full state pension. It has always been clear that index-linking the state pension and compensating people for what they lost after the Tories broke the earnings link is not the way forward because it would not tackle the problems that women face. In addition, a disproportionate number of women have not had occupational pensions or they have not been sizeable. On average, men will get £103 a week from their occupational pension while women will get only £17. That is a telling figure, because occupational pensions have always been the bedrock of our successful pension arrangements in this country. However, because women will disproportionately work for smaller employers, who might not have had an occupational pension scheme, or will work shorter hours, they will not have that pension provision to back them up. The other finding from research is that women will tend to save for their children, instead of for their retirements. That is quite an obvious point when one thinks about one’s own experience and what one does with one’s own money. It has been found that although women might make pension provision, once their children come along they either spend their money on what their children need straight away or if they do put money by, they put it by for their children instead of for their pensions. For those reasons, women have ended up in a particular position in terms of pensions; although that does not take into account all the things that people perhaps know much more about, such as career breaks to look after children or elderly people, part-time work and so on. The Government were absolutely right to go for the minimum income guarantee and the pension credit at the early stages.