Treasury and Work and Pensions

I was going to say that I could not agree more, but I could have agreed more if my hon. Friend had been allowed to speak for a bit longer. The benefits that have come from this House and have been shared across the United Kingdom are obviously positives. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) mentioned that he had seen real improvements on the ground in his part of the country, and it is clear that those north of the border have also seen such improvements. Their experience is similar to that of the people where I come from: we have removed the scourge of youth unemployment; we have built extra support for working families and their children; we have lifted thousands of children out of poverty; and we are rebuilding the very fabric of society through new schools and new hospitals, and by refurbishing millions of homes. Let us not forget that we would not be here today without the national minimum wage and the tax credits that some Members have tried to rubbish in this House today. There have clearly been problems. But there has also been massive good news for people who have had tax credits. We need to do more, however. Our Government must do more. The pension reforms are key to the long-term future of this country, and they are well-timed and necessary, but they must reflect the needs of the people of this country. To that end, I urge the Secretary of State to look at the issue of raising the retirement age in the knowledge that not all people have shared in the increase in longevity that there has been in this country. Manual workers still die much earlier in this country than do professional workers, and the factors linked to that should be considered. Likewise, raising the school leaving age may reduce the time that people spend in work, but let us not pretend that hard work did not kill anybody. Look at the facts. When the retirement age for miners was reduced in the 1980s from 65 to 62, their average life expectancy was 65 years and two days. It is no wonder that the mineworkers’ pension scheme was so well financed—there was nobody alive to take money out of it. In the effort to build up security in retirement for tomorrow’s pensioners, I urge the Secretary of State to work with the representatives of today’s pensioners in order to address their real needs now. I understand his reluctance to concede the demands of the National Pensioners Convention, which has called for him to raise the basic state pension to the level of the minimum income guaranteed for all. I also understand his reluctance to reinstate the link with earnings, and I appreciate the problems associated with paying a full pension to all citizens in order to deal with the unjust treatment of women in retirement. However, he has to accept that the NPC and other representative groups, including Age Concern, are genuinely concerned about the real-life experiences of the older people of today. In particular, I hope that the Secretary of State will address the case put forward by the NPC that the national insurance fund is massively over-funded, standing at £22 billion above its recommended ““safe cash flow balance”” level. It is clear that a fund that was set up and paid for by yesterday’s workers is now being withheld from them in their present position as today’s pensioners. A provision reinstating the link between pensions and earnings should be included in the pension reform Bill and not left to chance or the fate of the market. Using the national insurance fund for this purpose would remove that uncertainty. What cannot be denied is the legitimacy of the concerns expressed by pensioners’ organisations. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to hold a genuine consultation with them during the Bill’s passage. In the shorter term, I return to the point that I made during today’s Question Time—the real impact on older people of the energy price increases that have occurred in the past three years. This is a real-time issue. National Energy Action believes that today, 2.8 million people face real fuel poverty. The Government’s statistics are based on a figure of 1.2 million people, but that goes back almost two years. I urge the Secretary of State to address this issue. If he cannot do so in the short term, will he at least consider building in to next year’s state pension a heating upgrade to cover the shortfall? In calling for that, I have come full circle. Our lack of control over the utility companies and the price hikes are a direct result of the policies adopted by the Conservatives in their orgy of self-indulgence as they sold off our national assets. Nobody told Sid while he was buying his cut-price shares that he would end up paying through the nose for gas and electricity, or that water prices would quadruple as pipes leaked and drought orders and hose-pipe bans became the norm. Sadly for the Conservatives, some of us will never suffer from political amnesia. We will neither forget nor forgive the waste that they laid across this country, and this country will not turn to them while their policy is based on rogue promises and economic nonsense.