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Mr. Darling: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, because I notice that he said on a subsequent television appearance when he was asked about the minimum income guarantee:
- In the long term, how you uprate the value of income support, the minimum income guarantee, is indeed a matter for decision.
Mr. Willetts: The Secretary of State well knows that he has made no commitment to guarantee the earnings uprating of the minimum income guarantee beyond the life of this Parliament. I ask him to endorse the statement in his pamphlet entitled "Are you just getting by when you could be getting more?", which is the latest guide for pensioners. It describes the minimum income guarantee as
- the name we give to Income Support for pensioners.
Mr. Darling: If that is the best that the Tories can do, pensioners will soon see what the Tory party is all about.
We have increased the amount of money that goes to the poorest pensioners, because--as I said at the outset of my speech--one of the problems we inherited was the fact that 2 million pensioners were living in poverty, and no decent society should tolerate that.
Mr. Bercow: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Darling: I will in a moment. I am coming to a subject that I have no doubt is near to the hon. Gentleman's heart, but for entirely the wrong reasons.
The hon. Member for Havant has said that he will save money elsewhere in the social security system. We know that the Conservatives would scrap the winter fuel bonus, free television licences and the Christmas bonus, but they have two other proposals as well. They would raid the social fund, from which money goes to people who are absolutely poor and sometimes destitute, and scrap the new deal for lone parents--and all for 42p.
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes): My right hon. Friend said that the Opposition plan to scrap the winter fuel allowance. Does he agree that that would be very serious, as men between 60 and 65 would lose an allowance that has just been extended to them? The Tory proposals would not give any extra help to that group of people, who would be much worse off if they voted Conservative.
Mr. Darling: My hon. Friend is right. When the Conservatives announced the 42p increase proposal, they were less keen to emphasise that they would scrap measures that help many people in this country.
With regard to the new deal for lone parents, we have been able to spend £6.5 billion more on supporting pensioner incomes in part because we have cut the bills of economic failure, as we promised to do at the general election when we inherited high levels of unemployment. One of the ways we have achieved that is through the new deal for lone parents.
Last week, the hon. Member for Havant announced, for I think the third time, that he would scrap the new deal for lone parents. The Government are acting to cut the numbers of people who are out of work but could be in work. So far, 150,000 people have joined the new deal for lone parents, and 50,000 of them have found jobs. In addition, nearly 15,000 have gone into education or training. The cost of that is £1,300 a job, or about 10 weeks' worth of benefit. The programme helps people get into work.
The Conservatives plan to scrap the new deal for lone parents and to remove income support the minute a child reaches the age of 11. After that, there would be absolutely nothing. The hon. Member for Havant should remember that another legacy of the previous Conservative Government was the more than 1 million lone parents on benefit. At Tory party conference after Tory party conference, in order to give delegates some cheap thrills those lone parents got nothing but abuse.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West): Will the Secretary of State confirm that only about 5 per cent. of those invited to take part in the new deal for lone parents have emerged from the programme with a
successful conclusion? What estimate has he made of the percentage of those lone parents who would have got jobs without the intervention of the new deal?
Mr. Darling: First, 90 per cent. of people who are eligible join the new deal. From next April, a condition of receiving benefit will be that all lone parents--and several other categories of people--must take part in compulsory interviews for training. The economy has 1 million vacancies, and there are 1 million more jobs than existed when we took over government. We are determined to ensure that everyone who can work should work. We are achieving that through active intervention in the labour market because we know that, left to its own devices, the market provides no help at all.
Mr. Darling: I had better give way to the hon. Gentleman before he gets too excited.
Mr. Bercow: The breakdown of the NIRS2 computer system deprived hundreds of thousands of pensioners of their just entitlements. Fully 21 months have passed since the Secretary of State told the House that the matter would be sorted out within weeks. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that 280,000 pensioners are still waiting for their rebates, and that £140 million of compensation has still to be paid?
Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman is wrong on one point. The computer did not break down--it never worked in the first place, and the bill for that should be sent to Conservative central office. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman was daft enough to raise this matter, so I shall tell him that the contract to replace the national insurance recording system was entered into in 1995, and had to be completely rethought a year later. When the time came to switch the computer system on, it did not work. It was yet another mess that we had to clear up. The position has now been stabilised, no one is losing their money and we are clearing up the mess that the Conservative party left us.
Mr. Brady: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale): Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hear shouting from both Back Benches. Right hon. and hon. Members cannot do that--they must listen to the Secretary of State.
Mr. Darling: That is very good advice, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will give way to the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) now. Why not?
Mr. Greenway: This is a very serious point. I want to bring the Secretary of State back to the intervention of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac). It was my constituent, Mr. John Taylor, who took the Government to the European Court of Justice over the winter fuel payments for men over 60. I resisted the notion that this was a good idea. Will the Secretary of State tell me whether, but for the court case, the Government would
have extended the winter fuel payment to men over 60, and whether doing so represents good value for money for the social security budget?
Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman can tell his constituent that we will be giving him the money but the Conservative party will be taking it away. I am sure that that will be a great comfort to him.
Mr. Greenway: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Darling: No, I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Look how excited the Conservatives get once we expose their policies for what they are.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): My right hon. Friend has demonstrated that to make this bogus pensions increase offer, the Conservatives have been recycling money already spent. Is it not also interesting that the Conservatives have recycled Front Benchers and Whips on to the Back Benches to intervene, in an effort to disguise the fact that hardly any of their MPs have bothered to turn up for what they say is a major issue? It is their debate.
Mr. Darling: I understand that that is indeed the case. If the Conservative party policy was so good, surely some Back Benchers might have turned up to cheer on their colleagues. Instead, we have the unpaid payroll vote sitting behind them. Now I want to make some progress.
Scrapping the new deal for lone parents would be a false economy. If we allow more and more people to remain unemployed, there will not be money for the health service, pensions or anything else. The hon. Member for Havant was desperate to make his sums add up. He needed to raid something else from the social security budget, so he went for a measure that would be entirely self-defeating, as well as raiding the social fund. The social fund is necessary because, unfortunately, there are people who have no money and could be destitute. Presumably the Tories would just say to them, "Tough luck."
The House of Commons Library has confirmed that as a result of the hon. Gentleman's proposals, the best that a pensioner could hope for would be 42p--before tax, of course. However, he forgot to mention that his party also has an interesting policy with regard to pensioners and the national health service--with their 42p, they would have to fund expenditure that is presently free on the national health.
The Conservatives' health policy is that hip and knee replacements and hernia and cataract operations should be covered by private medical insurance. This is an extraordinary turn of events. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said, there are a lot of Front Benchers sitting opposite but here they are, trying to distance themselves from their party's policy.
I thought that it would be interesting to find out exactly how much those operations would cost. I looked at information from BUPA and other private health care providers, and found that a cataract operation costs between £1,800 and £2,400. A knee replacement--
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