Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Baroness Wheatcroft

Report stage
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak. I can see why there is a logic against the noble Baroness’s amendment in some ways, although if she puts the amendment to a vote, I will support her. There was a time—I am going back some years now—when the Government were committed to a link. The consequence of that was that I had to put forward a 75p pension increase. I remember saying to Alistair Darling, my boss, “Couldn’t we make a quid? It’ll be a lot easier to explain a quid than 75p.”. He said, “No, no. The formula’s there. The Treasury said this is what we do: we stick to the formula.” So we stuck to the formula. I was always able to defend it in a way because the supplementary pension, although people did not always apply for it, was worth three quid rather than 75p, but we know about the uptake. The Treasury factor in that people do not take up benefits.

However, here it looks as though pensioners are being treated unfairly. I do not think they are because, as I shall say tomorrow in the debate on the Budget, there are so many hidden tax increases, particularly for pensioners with a very small occupational pension who are at the moment outside the tax net but who will be sucked into it because of the freezing of the personal allowance over a five-year period. Substantial numbers will be paying tax without anybody announcing a tax increase, and that is unfair. I hope that some time, when he flies in, the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, will come to support me on the basis that he supported me and Audrey Wise in 1977 to make the system workable.

However, the noble Baroness has a point. I do not intend to speak on the other amendments because there is a point where logic says you cannot take account of the pandemic. I understand the long run. For a couple of years, I did the job that the Minister is doing and I understand that Ministers are presented with a 30-year run of the consequences of any change in the figures. That has got to be the case when you are talking about pensions.

If we had the second or third-best pension in Europe, we would not be having this argument, would we? However we have one of the poorest basic pension rates of any modern economic country, but we are, so called, one of the richest. Sometimes we have to say, “Hang on a minute: let’s take a stand,” and I think today is an opportunity to do that. I know the logic is against this, but when one looks at the figures, it is an opportunity to make a change. The Government could be forced to have a look at some of the long-run consequences of having such poor pensions, where they factor in low uptake of pension credit. One of the documents produced for the Budget on changes in household incomes mentions that they factor in that people will not claim benefits to which they are entitled. That is not very fair. Today is an opportunity for the little people to hit back.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 1 and 7 in this group, as well as to Amendments 3 and 4 which will be debated later. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He spoke sanely about what these amendments would do and why they should do it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, made the case very clearly. There are 2 million pensioners living in poverty and 1 million in extreme poverty. Noble Lords need to know that this Bill would put more people in this position. We should not be passing it unamended.

I find the arguments against our amendments pitifully thin—I am sorry, but I do. I remind the House that, in Committee, the Minister, who wants to do the right thing, said:

“The Government’s triple lock manifesto commitment remains in place”.—[Official Report, 26/10/21; col. 738.]


I know that that is a reference to the fact that we are told that the suspension will be for only one year, but that is not good enough. If you suspend the earnings lock for one year, the cumulative effect goes on, so the commitment is lost.

The commitment was to keep the earnings lock in place because earnings might well be greater than inflation—particularly CPI inflation—and there is no doubt that that will be the case. After all, the Government keep telling us that they want a high-wage economy. But they do not seem to want higher increases for pensioners. We know that, in most cases, these people’s spending is very curtailed. It goes predominantly on fuel and on food. Those are constituents of the CPI, but they are not in the same proportion as they are in pensioners’ spending. Therefore, increases in fuel and food prices hit pensioners harder.

I am still bemused as to how, in Committee, the Minister was able to tell us that,

“we are not currently expecting widespread, significant and sustained increases in consumer food prices in the coming months”.—[Official Report, 26/10/21; col. 740.]

I do not know what she knows, but the supermarkets certainly are. These price rises are already coming through. They are not yet fully reflected in the CPI, but we know that prices in the shops are going up. And the more that wages go up in this new, high-wage economy where we are encouraging drivers of HGVs to demand more money—which the Government say they deserve—the more this will feed through into increased food prices.

We need to make sure that our pensioners can eat. I do not want to be responsible for pensioners going hungry —or even hungrier than they have been in the past—and I do not believe that the Minister does either. It is imperative that we do what should not be beyond the wit of any Government and come up with a number that approximates effectively to where underlying earnings have gone in the last year. I have every confidence that the ONS can do this. Indeed, CPI is not quite as robust as the Minister would have us believe; it is often adjusted after a few months, or even a year, because a lot of numbers have to be adjusted as new information comes through. We could come up with an adjusted earnings figure which would enable the Government to maintain their manifesto commitment, which I am sure it would really like to do. It would enable the rest of us to ensure that pensioners –those on pension credit, as well those on the basic pension—lead a slightly better life. This is all part of the levelling-up agenda.