Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

When it comes to the long-term sick and disabled, the right hon. Gentleman is right that that is the one cohort where inactivity is increasing—in others it is reducing. He will be aware of our White Paper and the forthcoming legislation we have planned to make sure that we focus on what those who are long-term sick can do in work, rather than what they cannot. He will be aware of universal support and the working well pilot, all of which, together, will help to bring those numbers down.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

T7. Having helped Ukrainian guests to get childcare support and then get into work, I was delighted when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State changed the rules so that childcare support was available up front. He will be aware that most nurseries require a term’s fees in advance, so what more can be done to ensure that sometimes unstable and infrequent work is not further hampered by uncertainty about whether childcare will be available?

Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and, in particular, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), on their long-standing commitment to improving security for all our people in older age. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham has shown over a lengthy period his commitment to securing older age for all in our country.

I would like to make four brief points, which I hope my hon. Friend will take into account as this excellent Bill continues its passage through both Houses. First, I would like to talk about the safety of pensions. There is no doubt that auto-enrolment has been a huge success for many, but Ministers will be aware that some people—particularly those on low pay—have been auto-enrolled into a pension scheme and found, when they tried to get information on their investment, that the company handling their pension is, in fact, a bogus firm.

I vividly recall a constituent coming to see me at my surgery. He was a delivery worker on fairly low pay. He was concerned about his auto-enrolled pension and wanted to know what was happening to his assets. He was trying to get an answer from the administrator for that firm and was simply told that the assets had decreased in value. When he tried to find out more, the firm would not engage with him. It was incredibly difficult for me, as someone who is quite familiar with the asset management sector, to get on to the ombudsman on his behalf. It was very difficult to get answers out of anyone. I urge my hon. Friend to ensure that we have the ability to clamp down hard on scams of all sorts, including by those who provide auto-enrolment schemes, and to enable people who may not be at all familiar with managing assets and their own investments to seek redress where necessary.

My second point is about the structure of pensions. I completely agree that the dashboard concept is a great idea. There is no doubt that it will transform people’s ability to hang on to all their small pension pots from the various jobs they have had. Most people these days have several jobs during their career, not just one or two, and it can be a case of people looking in the back of a drawer and trying desperately to remember the name of the company where they worked for six months. That is why we end up in a situation where lots of people have lots of little pots that they never manage to lay their hands on. I ask my hon. Friend, as he considers the next steps for pensions, to consider properly the potential for creating a lifetime pot that follows the worker. Obviously, that would be a radically different approach to the pensions dashboard that enables people to keep track of all those pots, but, actually, when individuals try to consolidate a pension, quite often the transfer value of that pension is considerably less than the pay-out value if they hang on to it. That is often why one pension pot will try to hang on to a person as one of its members and stop them going somewhere else. In my view, it would be worth while looking at a pot that follows the individual that they then keep paying into wherever they work throughout their career.

In 2014, which seems like light years ago now, I was City Minister and I was very proud to be working with George Osborne, who was Chancellor at the time, to introduce the pensions freedoms. I heard what the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) said about that being an opportunity for scammers. I completely agree that some of the measures that have been put in place have really helped with that, and that, indeed, there have been some major problems. However, I do not agree that we should not have brought in those measures, because the ability of many people to then get a decent amount of money on retirement was quite life-changing for them. It enabled some to have a great holiday. It enabled others to help their children buy their first home, or to pay off their own mortgage to give them greater security as they went into a lower income in a later stage of their life.

At that time, back in 2014, we also upgraded the Pensions Advisory Service, so that people could get good advice on how best to manage their own pension assets. In my view, this has been a positive change, but there is still a very low level of understanding of pensions among members of the public, so for many, making decisions about what to do with their pension freedom or with any kind of investing is a really worrying time. That leaves them open to crooks and scammers. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister what conversations he has had with the Secretary of State for Education about adding an applied practical element to the maths GCSE that would educate young people on issues such as pensions, mortgages, car finance schemes, and, yes, student loans. What more can be done to enable people to familiarise themselves better at a younger age, so that it is not such a mystery to them as they reach the shockingly old age of people like me—

[Mr Speaker]

40!

[Andrea Leadsom]

Exactly, Mr Speaker—at least. I was referring to people who are starting to have to think seriously about these issues.

My fourth and final point is about investing in decarbonisation. It was fantastic yesterday to hear the Prime Minister talking about our ambition to be world-leading in clean growth. That was, in fact, the No. 1 priority that I set out for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy when the Prime Minister first took office last year. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister are determined to help our pensions system contribute to the excellent action on decarbonisation that the Government are already taking. I totally agree with them that this multibillion-pound sector can be a real force for good, and investing in the green economy can play a part in helping us to level up across the UK.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I just want to pick up on those points. The right hon. Lady is making some powerful arguments, and I commend her for that. She will probably have picked up, as I did the other day, that Exxon Mobil has been surpassed in terms of the value of its business by a Florida-based renewables company. When we consider that that was the origin of the Rockefeller Foundation wealth, it just goes to show that had we invested in some of those organisations earlier and provided encouragement, through tax or other fiscal incentives, for pensions to get into that sector, we would have done extremely well.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We should highlight the excellent work of some of the traditional high-carbon emitting companies of the past, which are really transforming themselves to become the renewables companies of the future. Some of the announcements made by BP, for example, have been incredibly welcome, especially those that show its determination to reduce its carbon footprint and to become one of the best and greenest companies of the future.      

So I agree that by encouraging pension funds to invest in greener industries, we can help to improve our green economy and thereby level up across the UK and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. May I therefore ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister what conversations they have had with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the Government’s proposed reforms to corporate governance and audit? There is no doubt that audit reform could provide a much greater focus on what businesses are actually doing to improve their carbon footprint, and corporate governance changes could improve the incentives on company directors to prioritise carbon reduction and protecting the environment. With improved transparency and information about company performance, it will be considerably easier for pension fund managers to make investment decisions that will build security for us all in older age as well as protecting our planet, which is a top priority for so many people right across our economy.

Once again, I welcome this very important Bill, which I think is going to be quite transformative. I hope that my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend will take my comments and suggestions in the light in which they are given, which is to try to improve and build on the excellent work that they have already done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Willott]

The right hon. Lady is right. This is very important. The Government are doing quite a lot of work to try to encourage the number of women going into science, technology, engineering and maths. The Government have a project with the Royal Society on diversity in STEM and we are supporting a scheme of STEM ambassadors going into schools to encourage people to take up those subjects. Of the 25,000 ambassadors, 40% are women and 10% are from ethnic minorities, so the Government are doing as much as they can to try to increase the number of women in these areas.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

8. What discussions she has had with her overseas counterparts on steps to promote the role of women in work internationally.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)]

We participate in the EU presidency Gender Ministers meetings, which enables us to discuss all the goals in the Europe 2020 strategy and the Beijing platform for action, including women’s employment.

Only yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities spoke at an international event at the Commission on the Status of Women, organised with the Tanzanian Minister of Equalities, specifically to promote women working in the science, technology, engineering and maths industries.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Although I agree with the Financial Secretary that appointments should be made on merit, does the Minister agree that City regulators’ record on appointing high-calibre women is pathetic, and that if they were to identify those women, that would go a long way to promoting women in work internationally and they would be very good role models?

[Jenny Willott]

The hon. Lady is quite right. We definitely need to increase the number of women in senior roles, not only in the City and financial institutions but across the country more generally. This Government have done a huge amount of work with Lord Davies to increase the number of women on boards and we are starting to see a significant increase in the number of women in those positions. At the beginning of this Parliament, the figure was 12.5%; it is now more than 20% and we are on target to hit 25% by next year. I agree with the hon. Lady, however, that this is an important issue that we need to tackle.

Housing Benefit

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

In my hon. Friend’s local authority area—Nottingham city council—200 people have been wrongly paying the bedroom tax because of this Government’s mistakes. She is absolutely right to mention the number of people in her area who are in arrears and the difficulties they will have in moving.

The eviction warning letters that have gone to so many people raise the threat of millions more being wasted in eviction proceedings and the emergency accommodation that will be needed for those who are made homeless. What a shambles.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I have great regard for the hon. Lady, but as somebody who used to work at the Bank of England, she will know that this is not a bedroom tax. How does she calculate that saying in effect that people who have a spare bedroom should no longer have it paid for by taxpayers is somehow a tax?

[Rachel Reeves]

But as the hon. Lady well knows, the reality is that for many of these people it is not a spare bedroom. It is the bedroom that their sons and daughters who serve in the armed forces stay in when they come home; it is the bedroom that their sons and daughters stay in when they are home from university; it is the bedroom that is used to store the dialysis equipment; and it is the bedroom that the carer comes to stay in. These are not spare bedrooms; these are rooms that are needed by many people with disabilities or with children. We can debate whether it is a spare room subsidy or a bedroom tax, but what we do not have to debate is the impact it is having on people. In the hon. Lady’s constituency and mine, and in places across the country, people are suffering because of the decisions this Government are making. The Government should instead do the right thing and cancel the bedroom tax.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I despair of Opposition Members who first insist on calling the spare room subsidy a tax, and secondly insist that it is utterly unfair to everyone. What they fail to accept is that the previous arrangements were totally unfair to taxpayers and to those in the private rented sector. Opposition Members wish to preserve an old system under which the maximum paid by the taxpayer for housing benefit reached £104,000 a year. They need to understand that that was completely untenable.

Between 2003 and 2012, overcrowding increased from 5% to 7%, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in overcrowded housing and 1.5 million on the housing list. How fair is it to allow people who have more bedrooms than they need to stay in that accommodation, leaving others facing bed-and-breakfast accommodation, homelessness or severe overcrowding?

Most of the constituents who talk to me about the spare room subsidy talk about their absolute need for more space, not less, for their families. The only person who has ever complained to me about having to move out of his or her home was a lady who said that she had raised three children there. It was a four-bedroom home, and she did not see why she should move out of it now that she was on her own in case they ever wanted to come home for the holidays. Can Opposition Members honestly, in all conscience, support someone remaining in those circumstances, against the 1.5 million people who are on the housing registers? They talk of fairness and of what is right and just, but they are talking nonsense to the people who are footing the bill and to those who have nothing.

In the 13 years of the last Labour Government, housing benefit rose from £11 billion to £21 billion a year. That is £900 for every household in the country. Is it fair on working families that they should be supporting housing benefit to the tune of £900 per household?

Let me end by asking Ministers some questions. What more can we, as a Government, do to make constituents aware of the enormous amount in generous discretionary payments that is widely available, and can we do more to promote house swap schemes? Many people talk about the unavailability of smaller properties, but they are talking about empty smaller properties rather than about house swaps. I think that swaps have huge potential, and a great deal of work is being done to promote them in my constituency.

Can Ministers confirm that discretionary payments will continue throughout 2014 and into 2015? Can they also confirm that the Government have made huge efforts to ensure that new houses are built? Are they still on target for the building of 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015? Finally, can Ministers explain why there was such a big underspend of discretionary payments last year, and what they can do to ensure that councils provide as much help as possible for those who need it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the key is in the word “discretionary”. Local authorities can ignore DLA if they think that that is appropriate, but they have the freedom to judge on a case-by-base basis; that seems to be the right way to respond to individual need.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

11. What progress he has made on implementation of the pot-follows-member model of automatic pension transfers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I can announce that we have been working closely with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to examine the feasibility of using the pay-as-you-earn data and system to deliver a secure, efficient and straightforward pot-matching element to the pot-follows-member system. A pot-follows-member system leads to more efficiency, potentially better member engagement, greater consolidation and better outcomes in retirement.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his answer, but as we are all living longer, which is great news, it is an ever greater priority to ensure that people save for their retirement. Is he looking at options such as the auto-enrolment system in place in Australia? Will he also consider a savings and retirement account for future pensioners?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend will know that our auto-enrolment programme, which we are in the middle of rolling out, has been highly successful, with nine out of 10 people choosing to stay in that programme. The Australian version is compulsory; we have chosen not to do that in this country. The fact that most people are choosing voluntarily to stay in pensions saving is a judgment that we have made the right choice. I should add that the Australians have said that they wish that they had introduced from the beginning the pot-follows-member system that we are introducing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Actually, in the last three months the vast majority of people who got jobs were getting not only full-time jobs but also permanent full-time jobs, and three out of every four jobs have been full-time.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

22. For the past three years running I have had an apprentice caseworker in my office who has been an A-level school-leaver. Does my hon. Friend agree that having apprenticeships perhaps before university is an opportunity for young people to get on to the road to work by getting some work experience and that that is an incredibly valuable experience for young people that more and more of them are taking advantage of?

[Esther McVey]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend who set up one of the biggest and best job clubs in her area, supporting people into work. Work experience is key and it does not matter whether people are on their way to university or just wanting to get into a job because this helps in understanding what jobs they want to do and what jobs they do not want to do. Around 113,000 people have gone through work experience and over 50% of them have ended up in a job. My hon. Friend is right to sing the praises of work experience.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree that there is a particular problem in that regard. I am talking to all the voluntary sector groups as well as to providers, including all our staff at the DWP, and also to Opposition Members. We need to make more progress, because youth unemployment is not good regardless of the numbers involved, and we cannot do enough to drive it down. I can give the hon. Gentleman a guarantee that we will make more efforts to deal with this particular problem.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

8. What steps he plans to take to restrict access to benefits for new migrants from other EU member states.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

14. What steps he is taking to reduce the eligibility to UK benefits of nationals of other EU member states.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

We are taking steps to tighten further the rules relating to all migrants, not just new migrants. We are strengthening the habitual residence test; the Home Office is creating a statutory presumption that European economic area jobseekers and workers who are involuntarily unemployed will not have a right to reside here after six months unless they can demonstrate they are actively seeking work and have a genuine chance of finding a job; and we will prevent those with no entitlement to work in the UK from claiming contributory benefits.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it may be a good idea in the longer term to consider a more contributions-based system of benefits for all? One of the biggest problems for many people is although they may have worked and paid into the system for many years, if they are out of work for a period they receive little more than someone who turned up only last week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The purpose of the policy is to readjust the disparity that exists and that lay there under the previous Government. Local housing allowance for social tenants in the private rented sector does not and did not allow people to have spare rooms. In the social sector there are a large number of houses that people occupy without occupying all the rooms, so the purpose is to get that smoothed out. A number of councils have people waiting for housing, people in overcrowding, while others are subsidised to have spare rooms in housing that they do not need.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there will be discretionary payments available to councils to meet particular needs? Does he agree that it is despicable for Opposition Members to be scaremongering unnecessarily and scaring people who are in a vulnerable position already?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Opposition know what they have been about over the past few weeks. They have deliberately set about trying to confuse people with their ridiculous title. They have tried to confuse people that they will all come under this change, when only those on housing benefit will be affected, and they also seemed to indicate to many others, such as pensioners, that they were not exempt. They are exempt.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

That is not what would happen. People who have contracted out into an occupational pension, such as his constituent, currently get money off their state pension, which is called a contracted-out deduction. That will remain part of the single-tier proposition. Therefore, somebody such as his constituent who has contracted out would not get the £144. There is no cliff edge. There would be a deduction for past contracting out in both cases.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

T3. Does my right hon. Friend agree that for Opposition Members to talk of the spare bedroom subsidy as a tax shows a profound lack of understanding on their part of what a tax actually is?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say gently to the hon. Lady that Ministers have no responsibility for the Opposition’s use of terminology. It is better that we leave it there. There has been a very full exchange on that subject.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we would make every effort to ensure that those most vulnerable people would not necessarily be included in a change like this. As I said earlier, this is not a policy at the moment; it is a consultation, and we are happy to listen to anybody about the groups they think ought not to be included in such a policy. I have an open door in that regard, and he is more than welcome to come and see me.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

T9. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best outcomes for children are where at least one parent is working? Does he also agree that all Government measures should try to support the best outcomes for children and families?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. Universal credit should help that enormously through its disregard process, which I call the work allowance. The allowance of a couple with a child will be more than £6,000 when they go back into work; under the present system it is only £520, and under the Work programme it is a little more. The difference is enormous and will provide a real boost and a real income to families and support them at home.

Minister for Older People

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Thank you.

At the Cabinet table, Secretaries of State are jealous of their remit, ready to explain when another policy trespasses on their departmental interest. If there was someone with responsibility for older people, the implications for them of each policy presented to Cabinet could be considered. We have had forums, tsars, taskforces and champions but we are still a long way from where we need to be. We need to try something new. An older person is likely to get a better standard of care on a hospital ward if there is one nurse on the shift with particular responsibility for that patient. Someone who has responsibility and is accountable will speak up to protect the interests of those in their care.

In the days leading up to the debate, it was suggested to me that older people are doing rather well at the moment. The Government have introduced the triple lock on pensions, guaranteeing that the state pension will increase by the greatest of earnings, prices or 2.5%. Pensioners enjoy free bus travel and winter fuel payments, and the over-75s get a free TV licence. The DWP has done well, so it is not a shock that the Department is responding to the debate, and I am delighted about that. Against those arguments, however, we have to consider the disproportionate impact of cost of living increases on older people. Saga has shown that between 2007 and 2012, retail prices index cost of living increases affected the whole population by 16.5%, but for 50 to 64-year-olds, the figure was 19.1%; for 65 to 75-year-olds, it was 22.4%; and for the over-75s, it was 22.2%.

We would do well to consider the many reports on health and social care that do not paint a rosy picture. The Equality and Human Rights Commission report on domiciliary care, the Care Quality Commission report on hospital care, the Centre for Social Justice report on quality of life in isolation and today’s CQC report on medication management beg to differ from the optimistic view. There is huge unmet need. In my city, Portsmouth, the local authority has budgeted for an extra 200 social care clients over the next five years, due to an ageing population, but today 1,000 people in the city have dementia and no access to any services. Major policy issues such as pension reform, which I am pleased the Government have tackled, and social care reform, which we still have to tackle—I am pleased that we are to do so—have been left for too long.

We need to do better. There is an argument for additional responsibility for a Cabinet member, but such an initiative will be judged on the practical differences it makes. What might they look like? A YouGov survey on the attitudes of people over retirement age found that 14% of people aged over 60 live more than 100 miles away from their most significant family members, excluding their partner. Six per cent have to travel between 50 and 100 miles to family, 8% between 25 and 50 miles, and 12% saw or heard from their family less than once a month. Isolation and inactivity were recognised by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology as accelerating

“physical and psychological declines, creating a negative spiral towards premature, preventable ill health and dependency.”

How are those issues reflected in transport policy? In my area, Southern Trains has recently introduced on the Portsmouth to Brighton route—a journey of 80 minutes —rolling stock that has no toilets. In rail franchise agreements, there is no mention of comfort standards or the provision of toilets, so old age pensioners could have to travel in crippling discomfort. The impact of the subsidy on train fares for old age pensioners is blunted, because it does not matter if the ticket is free when the mode of transportation is unusable. Older people are left with a poorer quality of life because there is another obstacle for them to overcome to stay in a job that involves a commute, and inactivity leads to demands on the health and social care budget. Transport Ministers may be sympathetic, but the Department refuses to act. A Minister for older people could intervene.

Let us look at the Treasury. In July 2011, the Office of Tax Simplification was asked to review the system for pensioner taxation. The interim report, published earlier this year, identified pay-as-you-earn on the state pension as an area to explore. People would not be taxed more, but would pensioners have to fill out self-assessment forms? Would they cope? Would they simply end up paying more tax through inability to process the forms? Plans have been mooted to combine income tax and national insurance contributions. Old-age pensioners do not pay such contributions, so will there be a different tax rate for them, or will pensioners be taxed more?

Quantitative easing and low interest rates are right for the economy as a whole, but they are not good for older people who annuitise their pensions and live off their savings. Quantitative easing has reduced gilt yields, on which annuities are based. The level of that annuity is then locked in. Should not offset measures be considered? What about an extra individual savings account allowance? More thought is needed if fairness is to be upheld.

Looking at work, economic analysts SQW found that older people benefit the economy by £175.9 billion, including £34 billion in social care and £10 billion in volunteering. Projections show that by 2030, those figures will be £291.1 billion, £52 billion and £15 billion respectively. That affirms what Saga has found about the willingness of older people to participate, in and out of work. Retirement is not a retreat from the world. Turning Point has asserted that integrated work to enable older people to stay independent for longer could produce savings of between £1.20 and £2.65 for every £1 spent from the public purse. Saga’s research suggests that 71% of over-50s would like to work part-time after 65, and 7% already work past the age of 70. The Office for National Statistics confirms that 1.4 million pensioners already work.

The demographic shift requires us to work longer, and we are willing and able to do so, but have businesses and industry really caught up? The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests that 14% of managers do not believe that their organisations are ready for an older work force. The Government have responded to that need and willingness by abolishing the compulsory retirement age and increasing the state pension age, but those excellent policies have not been accompanied by moves really to help employers manage their older workers and recruit new ones. At the close of 2011, 189,000 over-50s had been unemployed for more than one year. Of unemployed over-50s, 43% are long-term unemployed, compared with 26% of unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds and 35% of unemployed 25 to 49-year-olds. Training is often denied to workers nearing state pension age, as is promotion. Flexible working, phased retirement and mentoring schemes are few and far between. We need to do more to help older workers and to encourage employers to take them on.

In social care, we could certainly make better use of what we already have. As chairman of the all-party group on ageing and older people, I often hear care home providers boasting about their wonderful new home—its facilities, hairdressers, spas and shops. Those care homes’ doors are often closed to the local community, yet a few streets away there will be an elderly woman who is still independent, but whose quality of life suffers for want of a social life and bathing facilities. How many bathing facilities lie unused in our hospitals, homes and hospices?

Another example of missed opportunity is that most local authorities do not direct self-funders inquiring about care home options to financial advice. Instead, they wait until those people have spent their savings and are a burden on the state. Schemes that enable people to offset the cost of their care and keep their property assets intact by renting their home to the local authority, thus easing pressure on housing waiting lists, are not widespread, despite the headache that such initiatives would cure.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is another anomaly in that a person who works and cares for their partner receives carer’s allowance, but as soon as they retire, although they continue to care full time for that partner, they have to choose either their state pension or their carer’s allowance? That is a direct incentive for caring retired spouses to call on the state for help, although it would be far better for their loved one if they continued to care for them, with a bit of state support.

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and I know that she has made that and many other suggestions to the Chancellor and highlighted the administrative savings, as well as the improvements to the individual’s quality of life, that would result.

Finally, let us look at Government communications. On taking office, the Government froze their £540 million advertising budget, and over the following nine months, they cut £130 million from it. Every time we mail an older person about approaching retirement or a free television licence and we do not accompany that mail with a flu-jab leaflet, information on the winter warmth scheme, or anything else that we want to send them that week, we are wasting that remaining budget.

Those are just a few examples of the way in which better focus in the Cabinet on older people’s issues could lead to improvements in the quality of life for older people and save us money. Who might be the person for that important job? It should not be the Secretary of State for Health or the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, because the heavy duties that they already have in relation to older people could militate against the panoptical approach that is required. There is an obvious parallel with the Home Secretary’s additional remit for women and equalities; a similar duty for older people may sit well there. Such are the financial possibilities of the reform that perhaps the youngest and emphatically least grey member of the Cabinet, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, should take on the role.

The Deputy Prime Minister, it appears, was at a loss as to what to do with himself in quiet hours at the Cabinet Office, and took to doodling constitutional wrecking balls on the back of fag packets. He is now very busy indeed encouraging us to abolish the House of Lords, where many older people are to be found doing great work for this country. If he turned his attention away from that constitutionally destructive policy towards this economically and socially constructive proposal, we would be much better off. There would be many candidates for the job and, given the massive gains to be made in the quality of life for older people as a result of effective and efficient government, as well as a better return on investment, one would think that there would be a long queue to do the job.

Further evidence of the need for a co-ordinating role is shown by how difficult it was to agree the responsibility to respond to this debate. I congratulate the Minister of State on stepping forward, on the work that his Department has done to protect the interests of older people, and on his initiative better to understand their needs through the UK advisory forum on ageing. I hope that he will take away from this debate the ideas and aspirations that contributors will discuss, and consider how we might do a better job of spotting the opportunities and understanding the ambitions of this generation. There is no better mark of the values of a nation than the way in which it treats its older generation. This Government, I am proud to say, are going to address the issue of long-term care, which will have far-reaching implications, and there is no better time to ensure policy on older people is well co-ordinated across Whitehall.

It is perhaps appropriate that our debate takes place on the day on which, at long last, Bomber Command has received the recognition that it deserves for its immense achievement and sacrifice. I hope that the Arctic convoy veterans, too, will soon achieve the recognition that they deserve. Many of us are wondering why something so needed, right and obvious should take so long to do. Quite.