---

Ms Harman: The proposals to cut the benefits of lone parents while giving them no help to get out to work are wrong, and we will oppose them. In government, we will have a welfare-to-work approach for lone parents. We cannot sort out the £10 billion benefit bill for lone parents by shaving their benefits bit by bit. We must help them back into work.

Lone parents are some of the poorest people in Britain. They face additional costs in bringing up their children alone. The Secretary of State thinks that child care is the only problem; if lone parents get into work, they can get child care disregard. He does not understand. Lone mothers not only do not have their partners' income; they do not have their partners' time. With two parents, when a child has a school open evening, one parent will go to it while the other will stay at home to look after the child.

28 Nov 1996 : Column 502

Lone mothers have to pay someone to look after their children if they want to go to open evenings. Time is money for parents. Two-parent families have more time to look around the shops to get the bargain rather than having to buy the first thing available. They have more time to do that fifth repair on clothes rather than having to buy a new item of clothing.

In reality, it is more expensive to raise children alone, as the 1985 Government Green Paper recognised. The White Paper that followed it called for the

"continued recognition of the need for specific further help for lone parents."

The research has not changed; nor has common sense. People know what it is like to bring up children alone. All that has changed is that the Secretary of State has failed on welfare because he has failed on work. He is determined to make lone mothers--the softest target--pay the price. There are now more lone parent families trapped on benefit bringing up families in poverty because the Government have failed to get them off benefit and into work.

The Budget has not helped anyone off benefit and into work. Its benefit cuts will deepen disincentives to work. From October 1997, single people under the age of 60 will be able to claim housing benefit only for rooms in shared homes. How will that work in practice?

Lady Olga Maitland: Why should it not?

Ms Harman: I shall explain. Perhaps the hon. Lady will then defend how it will work in practice. If people have a job and they lose it, they could lose their home. If people are looking for work and see a temporary job advertised, they will think, "I had better not take it because if I go off housing benefit and the job ultimately falls through, I could lose my home."

The woman who has lived with her husband in a private rented home will find that, if he dies, she will lose her home because she will have to move into a shared flat or house. She will not be able to stay in her one-bedroom house or flat after he dies. She will have to move into shared accommodation--so it is lose your husband, lose your home.

When the young man in his 30s living in a one-bedroom flat loses his job, he will lose his home because he will have to move into a shared flat or house--so it is lose your job, lose your home.

The woman in her 50s who has spent most of her adult life caring for her sick mother will find that, when her mother dies, she will lose her home. She will not be able to stay in a one-bedroom house or flat. So, after a lifetime of caring for her mother, it will be lose your home.

The Government seek to save £100 million a year ultimately by this measure. That contrasts starkly with the Department of Social Security's expenditure of more than £100 million on a new headquarters, Quarry house, which the Public Accounts Committee yesterday condemned. It published a report containing a devastating indictment of the spending on Quarry house. If the Secretary of State has not read it yet, I suggest that he does so right away.

Yesterday's Budget failed to get help to pensioners. It is a scandal that, after a lifetime of work or caring for their family, pensioners are some of the poorest people in Britain today. Pensioners have been hit hard by the

28 Nov 1996 : Column 503

Government. The Government broke their promise and put VAT on gas and electricity. We called in this Budget for VAT on fuel to be cut to 5 per cent., but the Government failed to do that. The Government refused, so thousands of pensioners throughout the country will, as winter approaches, have to choose between heating and eating.

Almost 1 million pensioners do not claim the income support to which they are entitled. I have raised the matter on a number of occasions and, fortunately, there is now a growing awareness that many people who are entitled to benefits are not receiving them. Almost 1 million pensioners do not claim the income support to which they are entitled. They lose an average of £14 a week--more than £700 a year. Of those pensioners, 800,000 are women living on their own. They have no state earnings-related pension scheme, no occupational pension, no savings, no nothing.

So what has this Budget done for Britain's pensioners? It has made the situation worse. The existing income support form already deters almost 1 million pensioners from claiming their entitlement and, under the heading of simplification, the Secretary of State has announced that yet more obstacles will be put in the way of people who intend to claim income support by requiring more evidence to support their claim. The Secretary of State's proposals will deter thousands more.

The Secretary of State is oblivious. He says that the only reason why the poorest pensioners do not claim about £700 a year to which they are entitled is that they choose not to claim it; that they do not want it. He says in his fascinating letter to me:

"The claiming of benefit is of course a matter of personal choice and there will always be those who choose not to make a claim."

One million of them are exercising their personal choice to be £700 worse off every year. It is unacceptable for the Secretary of State to adopt that attitude, because the truth is very different. The message to pensioners from the Government has been clear. It has been, "If you claim benefit, you are a scrounger. If you are a pensioner, you are a burden." The message to pensioners has been loud and clear, and it is why 1 million of them do not claim and so suffer hardship.

We have argued that the proposals in the Government's anti-fraud Bill for cross-matching data should be used to help get the income that they need to the poorest pensioners who do not claim, but the Government have refused. They are prepared to cross-match data to combat fraud, but they will not do it to help the poorest pensioners because they think that pensioners do not claim as a matter of choice.

Pensioners are worse off under the Tories. The Tories have cut the value of the basic state pension by £20 a week by imposing VAT on fuel. Pensioners are worse off because the Tories have cut the value of SERPS in half and undermined occupational pensions. The Secretary of State boasted about second-tier and occupational pensions. His attempt to expand personal pensions has been a shambles. There is now a great lack of confidence in the financial services industry. We have had the scandal of mis-selling. There are now fewer people every year in occupational pension schemes. Pensioners fear that they will have to sell their homes to pay for long-term care.

28 Nov 1996 : Column 504

I want to take this opportunity to challenge the Secretary of State on his plans for the basic state pension. Will he deny the reports in the newspapers that he plans to do away with the basic state pension? Will he deny reports that he plans to means test the basic state pension? Will he deny reports that he plans to privatise SERPS and force people into poor-value, risky personal pensions?

Mr. Lilley: Yes, I will deny all three things. Now will the hon. Lady answer my question? Does she or does she not intend what she said in her letter to me--to introduce a lower basic state pension for those retiring at 60?

Ms Harman: I will deal with the hon. Gentleman's question--[Hon. Members: "Ah."] I will deal in 30 seconds with the Secretary of State's questions about the flexible decade of retirement. He has denied that he intends to do away with the basic state pension, that he will means test it or that he will scrap SERPS. The trouble is that there is a pattern here. This is exactly what happened before the last general election on VAT on gas and electricity. Rumours abounded, denials were categorical. The Tories won the election and immediately put VAT on gas and electricity. One thing that pensioners know is that they simply cannot trust the Tory Government.

Not only do the Tories wholly misrepresent their own plans, they misrepresent ours. Let me take this opportunity to say something about the flexible decade of retirement--as the Secretary of State mentioned it. In the past few years, a change has happened, and people now choose to retire at different ages. There has been a change in the old system whereby people got a job and worked full time for their entire working life from 15, when they left school, until they retired at 65 if they were men and received the basic state pension. Many people now want to retire earlier. All that we are saying is that if flexibility on the basic state pension means that individuals who have savings or a good occupational pension can choose to draw down their pension early at no cost to the public purse and can be certain that they will not fall back on the state later, why should they not exercise that personal choice? Why should we have a one-size-fit-all welfare state?

The Secretary of State has bounced from saying that our proposal would cost everyone £13 billion--

---