Before the Minister replies, I have a few other questions; perhaps he can answer them together. I thank the right reverend Prelate for clarifying that. Indeed, I wanted to be sure that the advice was independent of the debt recovery under the provisions. I apologise if I missed any of the Minister’s answers—I tried to tick them off as I went along, and he did pretty well, so I thank him for that.
First, can the Minister clarify that anyone in receipt of a qualifying benefit will be entitled to a loan whether they have or could be expected in the future to have any equity, or certainly enough equity to cover the loan? Secondly, if somebody loses SMI and as a result loses pension credit, will they lose access to passported benefits as well?
On the question of advice, the Minister described what subjects the advice would cover but I was not quite sure of the level of personalisation. I would put money on the fact that the pensioner will say, “These are my circumstances—should I apply for this?”. Will the adviser be able to say, “I advise you to do it—yes, you should”, or “I advise that you shouldn’t”, or will the advice be much more general, like the kind of money advice we are talking about in pension schemes? Did the Minister say that it was free to the claimant? I am sorry, I may have missed that. Finally, there was the question on redress for customers in the case of bad advice.
While the Minister is reflecting on those, I will respond to a couple of points made in the debate. I thank all noble Lords who contributed. I welcome the
noble Lord, Lord Young, to the debate, and thank him for what I choose to regard as the implied compliment that I had some good arguments earlier in the evening, even if I did not do so well just now. In response to the points he made, I find persuasive the research done for two different government departments that the move to 13 weeks had been effective in holding down arrears and repossessions. That was government-commissioned research. I may be wrong about that but it seemed to be one of the most compelling arguments for not going back to 39 weeks. But presumably the Minister will say that they will monitor and evaluate it, and I will be interested to hear what they say.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the Minister said that in the case of pensioners the beneficiaries are essentially not the claimants themselves but those who will benefit from their estate, but of course it is often the case that that is not strictly true. I live in Durham, and in County Durham plenty of people have houses which are, frankly, worth not very much at all by London standards, so they have very little equity in them. If this kind of debt prevents them accessing all that equity, it may mean that they will not have equity available to them which they might need to get at for care costs or other non-NHS covered support costs of different kinds. So it does potentially have an impact on the pension in their lifetime, not just on those to whom they bequeath the house.
Finally, I should have reiterated something right at the start. The Minister was kind enough to give his officials the freedom to brief us on the session, and I had a particularly helpful conversation on this area. I know it might not seem like it, since I have rewarded them by coming back with lots of questions, but in fact it has been very helpful and has meant that in this debate I have tried to focus more on how this will work than adopting a more combative style. So I appreciate that and I look forward to the answer to those questions.