I will try to keep my comments as brief as possible. I want to address some of the remarks that I have had thrown back at me as a supporter of this Bill and this coalition Government—not so much by Members, whom I have listened to carefully this evening, but in the newspapers, from the unions and from politicians in other political parties who have sought to make capital out of this issue.
Let me say clearly from the start that I—and, I believe, every single member of this coalition Government, whether from our position as Members of Parliament or from personal experience—very much support and respect the role of public sector workers across the
United Kingdom. I know from personal experience about the very hard work done by the police officers in London with whom I work. I know about the paramedic who came to the aid of a member of my family recently and solved a problem for them. I also know about those who are teaching my three children the three Rs in a local state school. I know from personal experience, not just through my work, just what a good job public sector workers do, and I do not think there is anyone in this coalition Government who wants to do anything to undermine the pensions of public sector workers or undermine their role in any way whatever.
It was the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) who talked about the problems in the private sector. Although we should not be making comparisons, it is perfectly true to say that people in the private sector have lost out greatly, and they have done so partly as a result of the previous Government’s policies. We have heard all about the tax on dividends, but there are all sorts of other, subtle ways in which private sector pensions were undermined by the previous Government. They included, for example, demanding that financial institutions buy Government bonds and gilts, instead of allowing them to invest larger proportions of their money in stocks and shares, as well as enacting policies that kept stocks and share prices down. However, those are matters to be debated on another occasion.
What is clear is that we are not going to allow what happened in the private sector to happen in the public sector. We saw the misery that that caused for people—our constituents—and we do not wish to see it happen to other hard-working people. At the same time, however, we cannot ignore the fact that although people may well be doing physical jobs in the public sector, there are people in the private sector who also have to do physical jobs. We do not seem to have heard much about them. What about the lorry drivers? I used to do that job for four or five years, and it can be hard and physical. What about all the people who work in factories? What about builders? Why should they have to work so many extra years to pay for the pensions of people retiring years before them who may not be doing physical jobs at all? To some extent we have to make some comparisons.