It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who is a very good member of the Select Committee on which we both serve. I will echo one of his key arguments, which is that we need to reform the triple lock and other pensioner benefits and to use the savings for adult social care and the NHS, given how much of those savings would go to those who are pensioners.
The key word used by the hon. Gentleman was “honesty”. We must level with the British people about the financial situation we are in. The way to look at it is to ask: if we had a blank canvas today, what would we keep of what we have now? No one starting a pensions system today would come up with the triple lock. No one would suggest a winter fuel allowance, costing £2.1 billion, which is paid to everyone regardless of their income or their national insurance record. In my view, no one would suggest a free bus pass, which costs £1.2 billion. No one would even suggest the £10 Christmas bonus, which Ted Heath introduced in 1972, costing £124 million at Christmas, at a time when the NHS is in crisis and needs more funding.
The essence of my argument is that 2020 is way too late. To have such a date is to use an arbitrary political timetable to enforce policy, at a time when the national interest requires us to look at the state of adult social care and the NHS and to find the money needed for them in a fair way. To me, the proposition that we are about to put more money into adult social care and the NHS but that none of it will come from existing pensioners is extraordinary. We have to look at pensioner benefits and the triple lock.
When it comes to the triple lock, we must remember that by 2050 the number of pensioners—the number of people over 65—will not be 10 million as it is today, but 19 million, which is almost twice as many. Look at the pressure our services are under today, let alone when there are almost twice as many pensioners. If we keep the triple lock, it will cost an extra £15 billion by 2050. My view is that we should recognise that the most vulnerable pensioners—those who need help from the state the most—are in the care system or in the NHS and in need of care.
I think we should look very hard at the winter fuel allowance. I would capitalise it for a year to invest in remediation measures, provide help with heating and so
on, and move people on to more competitive energy tariffs, and then I would wind it down and spend the money on the care system, because that is what pensioners need, particularly in the winter.
We should look at the free bus pass. We could put a nominal charge on the pass and allow pensioners to travel at peak time. According to my county council, that would be a huge saving. It is actually what many pensioners want, bearing in mind how many do not take advantage of the free pass, which costs the Exchequer £1.2 billion a year.
I have to add that we should look at free prescriptions. In England, we say that we pay for our prescriptions, but 90% of prescriptions in England are not paid for, because so many of them go to the over-60s. The cost of free prescriptions in England for the over-60s is £4.8 billion. I recently went to a pharmacy in the beautiful village of Clare in my constituency. Most of the over-60s there are relatively well-off and probably own their properties outright—of course, there are pensioners there who are not well-off—but the fact is that they receive free prescriptions while many far less well-off people of working age do not. That is the sort of moral issue we must talk about.
What would I use the savings on? People should be as open and honest about this as I and our Committee have been prepared to be.