Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Guy Opperman and Tom Hunt

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

We all know that unemployment is always higher when the Labour party leaves office. The hon. Lady might care to listen to a few key points: vacancies have fallen for nine successive quarters; employment is up; payroll employment is at a record high; claimant count is down; economic inactivity has fallen; disability employment is up by 1.3 million over the past five years; and, as for Blackpool, massive work is being done there. She will be aware of the intervention by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which has been working very hard across Government to transform the fortunes of Blackpool, with record investment—something that definitely did not happen when Labour was in Government.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

T3.   A few weeks ago, I visited Tools with a Mission, a 40-year-old charity in Ipswich with 70 or 80 local volunteers. It takes old, disused and discarded tools, the volunteers work incredibly hard to make them as good as new and those tools are sent to developing countries, where they make a tremendous difference—Zambia and Uganda are two examples. But the impact does not stop there; there is a local impact also. Many of the volunteers are of pensionable age or have recently retired; their involvement in the charity gives them a great sense of purpose and community, and the charity’s work with many individuals with educational needs has helped them to go on with the skills they have learned at the charity to get full-time jobs elsewhere. Will the Minister join me in applauding that work, and work with me to find funding to enhance what the charity is doing?

Pensions

Debate between Guy Opperman and Tom Hunt

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

It is a great honour and privilege to respond to the debate. As always with pensions, while we are engaging in a debate on a specific topic colleagues across the House never miss the opportunity to raise all manner of issues on pensions, to which I have been asked to respond. I am delighted to do so.

No sooner has Her Majesty signed the Pension Schemes Act 2021 on the dotted line—we thank her tremendously for that, and I thank the House for its endorsement of that wonderful piece of legislation, which will make our pensions safer, better and greener—than colleagues are urging me to bring forth another pensions Bill to further transform the pensions landscape. I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench, and the Deputy Chief Whip and the pairing Whip, will have taken due attention of that when bids for future legislation are put in.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

In a very practical sense and meaningful way, how do these reforms make a real difference to my constituents in Ipswich?

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is a champion for his constituency and rightly raises the importance of what we are doing. I draw his attention to two key points: first, the Pension Schemes Act will make his constituents’ pensions safer, better and greener; and secondly, the automatic enrolment reforms that we have brought forward as a coalition Government and then a Conservative Government unquestionably support his constituents, who are saving in their thousands, to the tune of 8% per annum.

Of course, my hon. Friend will be aware that in 2012, approximately 35% of our young people were saving into a workplace pension, and now 86% in his community are doing so. Similarly, women, who were saving at 40%, are now saving, quite obviously, up at 86%, as I outlined earlier.