It is a great pleasure to join the debate at this late stage, a debate introduced in a sense with the very good news about BHS pensioners. Many of us serving on the Select Committees chaired by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) share the enthusiasm for that result.
On intergenerational fairness, let me start by putting the case for the prosecution, as it were, which was laid out in more detail in the Select Committee inquiry that I and many other Members here today were involved in. The Committee effectively said that the UK economy is skewed. We focused on some key elements: house prices; life expectancy; the burden of looking after the old financed by the young; the triple lock on pensions; and the implicit social contract between generations that we felt had become skewed. That triggered two or three specific recommendations, in particular on the new state pension tracking earnings and doing away with the triple lock.
The factual evidence behind the case for the prosecution is highlighted in the figure that the value of the full state pension as a percentage of average earnings is now the highest it has been since the late 1980s. However, there is of course more to it than that. Some of the points I would like to highlight include the fact that spending on pensioners as a percentage of GDP is falling. That is partly due to a growing economy, increases in the state pension age and the fact that the triple lock applies only to the basic state pension and new pensions. The statistics, therefore, are not always helpful in terms of anticipating the future. One other point is that there is a strong feeling among some of us that the basic state pension needed to increase quite sharply, particularly between 2010 and 2020, because it had fallen behind strongly in the previous decade. Everyone will remember the business of the 75p increase under a previous Government. This is, therefore, not quite as simple a proposition as it first appears.
Among our pensioners today are those who served this country in extremely difficult times, including world wars and other conflicts. Many were brought up in very difficult circumstances in a world far removed from the conditions that most people today can imagine. There is then the matter of the young. The young have always faced challenges; their challenges have just changed over time. One hundred years ago people leaving school at the age of 18 were facing extremely different challenges, many of them on the western front. My own grandparents, as young people, met shortly after the carnage on the
Somme, where my grandfather had been severely injured. The woman who became his wife was nursing him. Although the challenges of today are considerable, we should not underestimate those of the past.
One of the ironies of our leaving the EU at this stage is that we are just beginning to adopt a more European approach to the homes we live in and to rent them for much longer, as they do on the continent. In a sense, the Government have recognised that in their ambition to create more social housing available for rent.
Other points have been well made, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who articulated much of what many of us feel about the National Citizen Service, which has so far cost about £1.2 billion—that is not on any balance sheet, of course, in terms of intergenerational fairness—apprenticeships and youth unemployment, which is at its lowest for 12 years, and the openings and opportunities in universities and further education colleges.
In that regard, I hope that the former right hon. Member for Havant, in his current role as chairman of the Resolution Foundation, when he is being provocative from that platform, does not try to set pensioners, those of working age and the young against each other, for that could be extremely counterproductive, as I will go on to set out. [Interruption.] Of course, things can be done to improve the balance in the relationship. Some of those were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), and we could look at a double, not a triple lock.
I can see that you are agitating, Mr Speaker, so I shall finish. In our efforts to make sure that the costs of old age do not cripple the future generations paying for them, we should never forget the hugely positive role that so many pensioners, grandparents and great grandparents play, looking after children and sharing their love and wisdom with their families, especially where the parents’ own relationships have broken down and the children are often being guided by their grandparents. In many ways, older people are always helping out and passing on knowledge. Let us never forget that.
The Resolution Foundation wants to analyse the balance of fiscal contributions and withdrawals. It is right that that should be done by that foundation and not the Government. Let us not forget, however, that incredibly sensitive issues are at stake, some of which emerged as moral issues during our discussion of the Assisted Dying Bill. We do not want to end up inadvertently setting generations’ interests against one another. At the end of the day, let us be mindful of what many in the House believe and the late Jo Cox articulated brilliantly: what we all have in common is so much more than what divides us, including across generations.
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