Social Security

It is good to have the opportunity to debate these important matters, albeit just for 90 minutes. It sometimes amazes me that we spend a couple of billion here or there, but that the form is that such things go through on the nod without anyone even considering voting against them. It is an absurdity that Parliament simply has to take or leave the whole order on occasions such as this. The part of the regulations to which we object most strongly is the freezing of the state earnings-related pension scheme and state second pensions, but current parliamentary procedures do not allow us to select the bits that we do not like and try to change them, so we are faced with the unenviable choice of either taking or opposing the whole lot. As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has pointed out, the last time we chose to register our disquiet on behalf of Britain's pensioners by voting against the entire order was when the Government had increased the pension by just 75p. It is, perhaps, no surprise that the pension went up by £5 the following year, and that, as my hon. Friend also said, legislation went through shortly thereafter to ensure that a rise of 75p would never happen again. So, although we were mocked by those who knew perfectly well what we were doing at that time, history will show that we did the right thing then, and that we are doing the right thing now by voting as I encourage my hon. Friends to vote tonight. More than 50 of them have already signed early-day motion 957, which sets out our reasons for doing so. Why do we propose to vote in that way? First, if we look at the additional state pension, SERPS and the state second pension, we see that this is not about a minority interest, although it might be a technical issue and something that people do not understand terribly well. Ministerial answers that I have received indicate that 6.5 million pensioners receive just SERPS pensions, 1.8 million receive both SERPS and state second pensions, and another 150,000 receive only the state second pension, so well over 8 million pensioners will not receive a 2.5 per cent. increase. The Minister gave an average figure of 2 per cent., which I am sure is right, but the increase will vary a lot between pensioners who have very little SERPS pension, for whom this will not make a lot of difference, and those who have never contracted out, have never had a company or private sector pension and have been in SERPS all their lives. They will tend to have been lower-paid workers who did not have the opportunity of joining a good company scheme, and a big proportion of their total pension income will come from SERPS. They will therefore get less than the 2 per cent. figure that the Minister has quoted.