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Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) kindly invited those who oppose his Bill to say so. In one sense, I am happy to voice my disagreement, but in another it gives me no great joy, as I am a great admirer of my hon. Friend. He and I agree on many matters, but we shall have to disagree on this.
Of course, I understand my hon. Friend's motivation. Who could fail to respond to his warning that fireworks cause injury or even, tragically, the occasional death? My hon. Friend disapproves of that, as do a number of his constituents. However, I part company with my hon. Friend over the disappointing way in which he reaches for the ban and the licensing regime to solve the problem. That is classic old socialism. I should be surprised if new, modern Labour Members were attracted to my hon. Friend's solution, as it closely resembles the old-style, patronising socialism of which we thought that we had seen the back. However, my hon. Friend's Bill in effect patronises the public.
If a habit existed that was harmful to individuals and to society, would my hon. Friend want to ban it outright? Might it not be more appropriate to warn the public about possible dangers, and then let intelligent people make up their own minds? To my mind, that would be the preferred solution, and it is the approach that has been adopted up to now.
My hon. Friend used statistics skilfully but rather selectively. I considered this matter not long ago, and am happy to say that I found that the efforts of successive Governments and Ministers over a period of years had resulted in a fall in the rate of accidents caused by fireworks. That is a result of the assiduous attention of a succession of Ministers, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). By informing the public and warning them of the danger, we have caused people to be ever more careful about the use of fireworks.
My argument is also more general. Without much difficulty, we could identify a number of activities that, tragically and unfortunately, cause mishap, injury and even death. In different ways, horse riding, mountaineering, rugby, off-shore boating and flying private aircraft all cause tragedies to occur. People are warned in advance of the danger, and undertake those activities in the full knowledge of the danger. Some of those activities cause danger to more than the participants. For example, brave volunteers go on to mountains or out in Royal National Lifeboat Institution boats.
We do not reach for the ban for those activities. We do not say that, because we disapprove of them or because they can cause injury, we must ban them. That is not the instinctive reaction of the Conservative--at least,I thought that it was not--and that is why I am disappointed by my hon. Friend's suggestion. I was even more disappointed that he went beyond the ban to introduce an old enemy--the licensing regime. A bureaucracy will be set up at the taxpayer's expense to tell people when they may or may not use fireworks in the pursuit of whatever pleasure they get from them. To do so would replace what my hon. Friend called a nightmare with nothing more than another nightmare. That is the wrong response to the problem.
My disappointment will not diminish my admiration and respect for my hon. Friend. I do not think that anything could do that. However, I must ask him to think again about his approach. Does he wish to set the precedent of banning something just because he disapproves of it or believes that it might injure people? I ask him not to go down the track of patronising the public, telling them that they do not have the sense to make a decision once they have been given information, so he must make the decision for them. That must run counter to conservatism, and I hope that my hon. Friend will think again. I oppose the Bill.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir Teddy Taylor,Mr. Richard Shepherd, Mr. Ken Livingstone, Mr. Stephen Pound, Mrs. Christine Butler, Mr. Andrew Mackinlay, Mr. John Cryer, Angela Smith, Ms Diane Abbott, Mr. Paul Burstow and Mr. John Randall.
Sir Teddy Taylor accordingly presented a Bill to ban the sale of fireworks to the general public; to provide for a licensing system for firework displays; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 23 July, and to be printed [Bill 97].
Madam Speaker:
We now come to the Opposition motion on the Government's pensions policy. I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
I beg to move,
Today's debate is about what we believe--andthe country is rapidly coming to believe--to be the Government's failure on pensions reforms. Almost the first thing that the Government did on coming into power was to send a signal to pensioners that they were second-class citizens. The removal of advance corporation tax dividend tax credits was a massive blow to pensioners and pension funds. In effect, it was a tax of £5 billion on long-term savings. No tax that the Government have imposed fits the description of a stealth tax better than this one. They hoped--no, they knew--that most people would not realise how much money they would lose each year.
Before the election, it was all different. The Labour party said in its manifesto:
The first year, which looked and sounded like the Mad Hatter's tea party, was succeeded by the second year, in which No. 10 Downing street parachuted the present
Secretary of State in to rescue the situation. The Secretary of State's record is what is to be examined today. After further delay, he finally decided to publish the Green Paper on pensions. Ministers were obviously rowing behind the scenes about compulsion. They were debating behind closed doors whether there should be extra compulsion. It appears that the Chancellor vetoed that, so no compulsion was included--or maybe it was.
If we glance at page 105 of the Green Paper, we find a little reference to what Ministers intended before they decided to publish the paper. It refers to:
The Bill that the Government published as a result of the Green Paper seems to rule out extra compulsion--or does it? The Secretary of State now seems to be shifting his position. He starts, it appears, with some sort of equivocation, but now he is saying, as was reported in the Financial Times on 5 May:
First, the Government advance one line openly and boldly while quietly holding on to another, then they wait to see what the opinion polls tell them before finally settling their policy. Perhaps the public can be convinced that both options are Government policy at the same time. That is not all. The Government were in such a panic, having delayed the reviews for so long, that they published the Bill detailing stakeholder pensions and moved it into Committee before the consultation process was even finished.
The Government set out a consultation process in the Green Paper and suddenly--this is the third one, remember--the Secretary of State got bored and decided to give the answer anyway, and wrote the Bill. It is rather like "Alice in Wonderland"--sentence first, verdict afterwards. That is the nature of the Government. They conduct sham consultation processes that are a waste of their time to cover their inability to make decisions. Yet the consultation process in which they engaged would have showed some serious flaws in the Bill, if they had waited to listen to the responses.
The lack of provision for advice in stakeholder pensions will strike a heavy blow at the proposal. The Government said that the public would not need it because the stakeholder pension is simple and low cost. True to form, however, the Government have not banished advice. They have just moved it outside the scheme.
In January, the Minister of State said:
The Government came to power making much of mis-selling; they banged on about mis-selling almost every day and it seemed that that was their only policy. That is ironic, because they are now guilty of creating the most fertile possible territory for the biggest mis-selling exercise of all, and one for whose results future taxpayers will have to pick up the bill.
In the midst of all that, the Secretary of State wobbled. On 6 May, hidden away in Money Marketing, a spokesman for the DSS stated:
Another problem is that stakeholders will need to have trustees. However, the lifelong independent savings account scheme--LISA--launched by the Treasury and supported by the Secretary of State, has no such requirement. Independent observers agreed with Conservative Members that that complex structure of trustees would be expensive and would offer little protection. The NatWest response to the Green Paper was clear:
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That this House believes that the Government's proposed pensions reforms are in chaos and will do great damage to long-term savings and pension provision, especially occupational pension schemes and Group Personal Pensions; that, unless changes are made which have been called for by Her Majesty's Opposition, the stakeholder pension will be an expensive failure; further believes the Minimum Income Guarantee combined with the proposed State Second Pension will constitute a massive extension of means-testing; and condemns the Government's complacency and incompetence which will ensure millions of future pensioners will be forced into dependence on state handouts in retirement.
I should like first to put on the record how sorry I was to hear of the death of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett). I admired him greatly, although we were on different sides, and I shall remember his diligence and his quality. The same goes for many of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
"We will support and strengthen the framework for occupational pensions."
The removal of ACT dividend tax credits represents the Labour Government's first abject failure. Labour's first year in social security was about rows and long consultations--a sort of Peckham v. Birkenhead football match, but at least the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) arrived in government with some costed proposals. Those proposals were cut to pieces by the Chancellor, who demanded something very different. So, while the right hon. Member for Birkenhead gave birth to the term "stakeholder", by the time of his departure, he was no longer responsible for what it meant. Like "new Labour", the name was kept--a sort of fig leaf over the Government's nakedness on pensions.
"compulsory funded pensions for those earning over £9,000 a year."
A mistake, surely, because elsewhere the Green Paper says:
"We do not believe higher compulsory saving is justified."
So the Government are having it both ways. Is it a mistake or is it deliberate?
"The Minister said whether they--
he was referring to the self-employed--
"should be compelled to contribute remained a live issue."
So there we have it, absolutely clear as mud. Perhaps it is the new Labour way of making change.
"I would expect the costs of advice to be met by the individuals who use it."
That is really big of him. So the scheme is low cost and simple provided that individuals pay for the advice themselves. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) and others pointed out that, unless the Government tackled
that problem, many people would face that extra cost; they would not opt for the advice and could end up taking the wrong pension.
"It is true we are considering the arrangements for provision of advice for stakeholder pension schemes."
He had suddenly realised that they had a problem. [Hon. Members: "It is a U-turn."] Is it a U-turn? In a written question, I asked the Minister of State about the matter. He sent me a real answer:
"We shall be consulting further."--[Official Report, 10 May 1999; Vol. 331, c. 53.]
There it is, clear and straightforward--the smack of firm Government. The Minister of State knows where he is going, provided that he can ask someone else to tell him.
"Trustees can add little extra protection but will make schemes more complex and expensive to administer."
In Committee, as the Minister of State is aware, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford said again and again that the Government would have to think again. In effect, the Minister said, "No, we know what we are doing." As we have discovered, it takes a little while; we pounded away and, eventually, the penny dropped. The Secretary of State wobbled again. In an interview in the Financial Times, he stated:
"alternative governance structures to trustees for stakeholder pensions would be allowed."
There were nods and winks, but nothing was in the Bill. I asked the Minister of State another written question, to which he answered:
"We . . . propose to consult further on governance arrangements."--[Official Report, 10 May 1999; Vol. 331, c. 53.]
That is the smack of firm Government.
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