Social Security

I thank the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) for leaving me time to make a few comments. I think highly of him and agree with a number of his points, including the suggestion that we should be able to amend such an order. The public would find it bizarre that we have to take it or leave it. I also agree that those at the bottom seem to be suffering the greatest pain from the recession. That is the basis for my remarks. I have some reservations, however, about the Liberal Democrat tactic of voting against the increase in order to get a bigger one. The Minister made some interesting comments. For example, she claimed that the Government are protecting the most vulnerable. That sounds a reasonable statement, but when we look at what is happening in the wider economy and the amount of money that has gone into the banks and elsewhere, it sounds a little hollow. It is easy to speak about percentages. I noticed that the official Opposition and the Government are keen to talk about the percentages, be it 2, 2.5 or 1.5 per cent., but let us remember that in real terms in 1979 those at the top were earning about three times as much as those at the bottom. That has widened to four times as much. In wealth terms, according to the recent report on inequality, those in the 10th percentile now have 96 times the wealth of those in the 90th percentile. That is the kind of sick society that we are living in. Some in this society, as we have been reading, continue to get huge bonuses. We are arguing about a pension going up £2.40 a week. That will not buy a pint of beer in London and will barely pay for a decent coffee. We need to look at the actual figures, not just the percentages. Jobseeker's allowance is going up from £64.30 to £65.45, which is an increase of £1.15. I wonder how many of us could live on that, given that our salaries are about 19 times that amount. The Minister said that we need to be balanced about the costs. She said that the cost is about £2 billion, yet Trident submarines cost about £100 billion, so where is the balance in that? She also said that there needs to be an incentive to work, but perhaps that just shows that the minimum wage is far too low and needs to be part of the equation, instead of being lost somewhere else. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) talked about bribes and, presumably, referred to those same increases of £2.40 a week and £1.15 a week, but I just wonder what he would do for a bribe of £2.40 or £1.15—not very much, I suspect. We are disappointed that the deferred pensions are not being increased. The increases before us are not satisfactory, but anything is better than nothing.