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12.5 pm
Mr. Eddie Loyden (Liverpool, Garston): I doubt very much that the House will be convinced by the Minister's remarks. It was brought home to him by my hon. Friends that the Government undoubtedly were guilty, but he made no reference to the fact that the ombudsman found that the Government were responsible and made no attempt to argue the Government's case. Why has the Minister ignored the pleas from Opposition Members to meet the Government's obligations to the pensioners? That is typical of this Government.
I wish to point out to the Minister that those pensioners recently lobbied the Department of Transport to meet the Secretary of State. They stayed there for more than half an hour, but he sloped out of the building at the end of the day without meeting them. That shows how the Government react to the rights of working people and, in particular, to the issue of pensions. We have heard today a weak excuse from the Government, who are trying to avoid their responsibility and to ignore the advice given by the Parliamentary Commissioner. That sums up what the Government are about, and they ought to be condemned for the way in which they have dealt with this problem.
I declare an interest as a member of the Transport and General Workers Union.
Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West):
First, I apologise for not being here for the beginning of the debate. That was partly due to the fact that the debate started earlier than scheduled. The debate is due to continue until 12.30 pm, and I wish to make some brief comments. Since I have been in the Chamber, I have shared the
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The Minister seemed extremely reluctant to admit that the trustees of the fund were appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport immediately after privatisation. He is busily trying to shift responsibility away from where it should lie--squarely with the Department of Transport.
Lengthy litigation would create a considerable cost not only for the general taxpayer but for the bus pensioners, who are owed money but will have to contribute to paying for the expense forced on the nation by the Government's unwillingness to accept the independent judgment of the pensions ombudsman that the money should have been paid years ago.
I hope that the Secretary of State will not confirm the view expressed by the Minister but will consider the matter for himself. Is it the most prudent use of public money for the matter to be put before the courts? I believe that it is not.
The Minister has plenty of time--another 20 minutes--and I would be extremely grateful if he would tell us the expected cost of the litigation. How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds will it cost? There are ramifications for other public industries. I understand that there are British Rail pensioners in precisely the same position, and there are important implications for other public sector industries that have been privatised as a result of the Government's dogmatic policies since 1979.
The chickens are coming home to roost, and unfortunately the cost is again falling on British taxpayers. The Government have lost those important public assets and they want to rip off British taxpayers for a second time by making them pick up the costs of legal action over matters that were an integral part of the legislation that was forced through the House some years ago with Government majorities of 100, ignoring all the criticisms and warnings from Opposition Members.
At that time, the Government, with their usual arrogance, steamrollered through those matters, ignoring every constructive criticism and legitimate question put by Opposition Members. As a result of that arrogance, the Government have some apologising to do. The Minister apologised to us for not apologising. I believe that not only the Minister but all his predecessors and successive Secretaries of State should do more than apologise: they should act on the independent advice of the pensions ombudsman.
There is no need whatever for litigation. The ombudsman's view should prevail and the money should be paid to those former bus employees who are undoubtedly entitled to it. That should be announced by the Secretary of State as a matter of urgency before the general election.
The Government should not shuffle off responsibility yet again. The litigation may not be resolved for years, so the Bill will fall not on this Government but on the next Labour Government. In the best interests of the British
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I declare an interest as a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, to which many of the former bus employees also belong. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden), I attended the lobby at the Department of Transport in December with a large number of those former employees, who were eager to talk to the Secretary of State. Instead of having the guts to talk to us and explain why the Government were refusing to hand the money back, the right hon. Gentleman bowled through the lobby, undoubtedly to some chauffeur-driven lunch somewhere in the west end, where he would not be required to offer explanations for incompetence and dishonourable action.
Mr. David Porter (Waveney):
In continuing the vein of this morning's debates, I am pleased to have the opportunity to turn the House's attention to the welfare of pensioners in general. I am delighted that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for North Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), is here to reply. I have already told him that I wish to raise many issues that impact on pensioners, causing them worry and affecting their well-being. My hon. Friend will not be able to answer all those points, but I want to place them on record so that they can be passed to the appropriate Departments of State.
Periodically, anniversaries and the wartime memories of our older citizens bring home to us the debt of gratitude that we owe to our retired constituents. Those same people have given lifetimes of work and service to families, businesses and communities and to the country. Despite all that is provided in direct help, through payments, health care, local authority provision, taxpayers' funding, many of them feel vulnerable. Some fear that they will not have enough left to live on. They want long-term care for independence and security in the increasingly long periods of their crowning years. Everything from prices to heating, from health care to community care, from crime to transport, is pertinent. All those issues are challenges for us as politicians.
In view of the weather so far this winter, it is worth pointing out that the problem of keeping warm in winter is top of the list of older people's concerns. Every winter, we seem to redesign the cold weather payments scheme because it never quite seems to relate to the particular winter being experienced. Payments triggered at meteorological stations by postcode areas may mean that payments are prompt and automatic to those entitled to them, but the weather can be very varied over short distances and the system is not sensitive or flexible enough.
The wind chill factor is very much part of the present debate. I accept that the private Member's Bill that is before the House this week may not be the answer, but the wind chill factor must be acknowledged. Many of my constituents live on, or close to, the coast. The winds off the North sea that we get for most of the year mean that people feel colder. I know that the payments deal with homes being cold rather than with the people in them being cold, but only the best insulated homes can withstand penetrating winds that can cut into the strongest person, never mind the frailest. That has been graphically shown in the past month. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister is looking at cold weather payments with an eye to being more flexible. Surely technology can produce accurate temperatures and wind chill measurements, even street by street.
We need a better way of encouraging the take-up of help if we are to give it. If Age Concern's figures are right and almost a million elderly people who are entitled to support do not claim it, we are not maximising the help that we make available. The Conservative party has been rightly keen to root out welfare scroungers, but we should also address under-claiming if we are to have a system of support through benefits. Many people have a pride that
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People who are just above the income support level, those who have had no opportunity to build up extra pensions, those who were prevented by war service from so doing, and also people who have worked and saved, all feel at some risk. Some resent how the social security and welfare system helps some people and not others. They often feel that the undeserving are rewarded and the thrifty penalised. The debate and vote in the House on the pay of Members of Parliament brought forth a fresh bout of that feeling.
We must understand such feelings, because the feelings of significant numbers of people are the trends in politics that we have to recognise. Whether such fears are real or groundless is not the point: when people have them, we politicians have to address them. That is why scaremongering for political gain is so irresponsible and hurtful. The allegations in The Guardian late last year, led by the Labour party, that the Government tried to cover up cuts in benefits to war pensioners was merely the latest example of the deliberate distortion, the half-baked twisting, that does so much damage. The deliberate confusion of separate pensions issues can cause real suffering and anguish.
The future of the welfare state is one of the most urgent debates that the country faces. All parties are engaged in variations of radically thinking the unthinkable. So far, the only consensus is that we cannot go on as we are. We can project the number of retired people, but not the European demands on us--especially for bailing out the underfunded German pension scheme--were there ever to be a single currency. We cannot project public demands in terms of health and living costs or the heights that health technology will reach and the bills that will have to be paid for that.
We have discussion papers arguing the full range of ideas from left to right--papers enough to burn and keep warm with. One view is that future national insurance contributions may not be enough, so we should have a funded pension scheme and the voluntary or private sector should replace state welfare. A second view is that all benefits should be abolished and replaced with a basic weekly allowance for all, irrespective of need. To the poor, that would be a subsidy; to the rich, a tax cut. A third view is that we should let universal benefits wither on the vine and redistribute the money to the poorest, but how do we test for the poorest and draw a cut-off line? As ever, the devil is in the detail. A fourth view is that we should divert other spending to pensioners without regard to their incomes.
12.7 pm
12.30 pm
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