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2.42 pm
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): Studying the subjects that the Tories have chosen for today's debates leads me to an inescapable conclusion: it took the Labour party 18 years of opposition to become fit to form a Government; on this form it will take the Tories a lot longer than that to become fit to form an Opposition.
For the second debate--obviously, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall not discuss that subject--the Conservatives have chosen genetically modified crops, a matter that divides the sovereign's consort from the heir to the throne, and the heir to the throne from the Princess Royal. Yet the Conservatives want to make political capital out of it.
For this debate, the Tories have chosen a subject on which their record is so appalling that one would think that they would never presume to open their mouths about it. The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for
Havant (Mr. Willetts), in a speech that managed simultaneously to be both conceited and inadequate, told the House that he offered pensioners respect--and respect is all that the Conservatives are offering pensioners. Even if they offer that, we should remember that one of their Prime Ministers used to refer to the retirement pension as a "donation".Let me make my position clear. I think that the Government were seriously mistaken to put up the pension by only 75p this spring. I have a right to say that because months beforehand, I wrote to my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, telling them that it would be a blunder to bring in an increase of that size. Furthermore, although I welcome the free television licences for those aged 75 and over, I have said repeatedly that the policy should extend to all pensioners. So I have a right to tell the Government to do even better, while praising them for all that they have done for pensioners--the £150 winter fuel allowance, the £10 Christmas bonus, the free eye tests, the free TV licences for older pensioners and the cut in VAT on fuel.
The Conservatives do not have the right to utter a peep about pensions. We must remember that they legislated for the link between the basic pension and the prices index, and that is the basis for the 75p increase that the Tory leader has the nerve to denounce. In their 1997 manifesto, the Tories promised to
- continue to protect the value of the basic state pension against price rises.
By ending the link between pensions and pay in 1980, the Tories were responsible for the fact that today's pension is £31.40 a week less for the single pensioner and £50 a week less for a married couple. Ending that link meant that over their years in office the Tories stole £115 billion from pensioners, in return for which they are now offering 42p.
The Tories are now trying to make up for that, or at least pretending to do so, by promising a single £5.50 top-up on the pension. The hon. Member for Havant admitted this afternoon that that would be a once-and-for-all increase, before they went back to increasing pensions solely on the basis of the price index. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has pointed out, the shadow Chancellor has admitted that the £5.50 top-up would not involve a penny of new money. It would all be paid for by money already committed, most of it to pensioners. This must be a first: the only self-financing bribe in the history of political peculation.
However, the situation is even worse than that because the £5.50 top-up would be for one year only, but the cuts--the end of the winter fuel payment, the Christmas bonus and the free TV licence for those aged 75 and over--would be for ever. If the Tories ever came to power, they would budget to spend far less money on pensioners than Labour does. They would not spend a penny more on the pensions increase, as they have admitted, but they would end the winter fuel allowance, which would save the Treasury £1,300 million a year. The end of the Christmas bonus would save the Treasury £85 million a year. The end of free TV licences would save £364 million a year. So in exchange for that
self-financing bribe for one year, the Tories would take away £1,750 million, and rising, from pensioners every year.
Mr. Kaufman: I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman in a moment; I have him well in mind.
On the one hand, there is 42p, with no new money, and on the other, £1,750 million will be taken from pensioners every year. No doubt if the Tories ever got the chance, they would give that money away to the top taxpayers who benefited during their years in office.
A funny thing about the free TV licence is that the Tory leader announced his intention to abolish it on 24 May, but only the day before, when the House passed the legislation facilitating the free TV licence, the Tory Front-Bench spokesmen were confirming their "warm, enthusiastic, welcoming support" for the measure. On 23 May, they said that free TV licences were wonderful; on 24 May, they said that they had to be abolished. That is not so much a U-turn as a hairpin bend. For reasons that I have always failed to understand, the hon. Member for Havant has been referred to as "Two Brains"--two faces would be a better description. Madam Speaker has ruled it out of order to describe the Conservatives as hypocrites. That is just as well, for hypocrite is too kindly an epithet to apply to that party.
The Liberal Democrats, from whom we have just heard, should rename themselves the lachrymose crocodiles. During last month's local elections, that grubby leaflet "Focus" sought to stir up discontent in my constituency about what the Liberal Democrats called the "75p pensions insult", but what is their policy on pensions?
The Liberal Democrat amendment states:
- the Conservatives have admitted that, had they been in office in April 2000, they would have increased the basic state pension by just 75p . . .
My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) was unable to find the Liberal Democrats' policy on the website, but my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Ms Ward) quoted it from memory. I do not need to quote their policy from memory; I looked it up in their 1997 manifesto, which states:
- The basic state pension will remain indexed to prices.
Pensioners would have been worse off this year under Liberal Democrat policy, because the party had no policies to introduce winter fuel payments or free TV
licences in its election manifesto. The Liberal Democrats battened on to those, but they are our policies, and--as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes said--ours alone. Not only would pensioners have been worse off this year under Liberal Democrat policy because of their 75p increase without a winter fuel payment or free TV licence, but the hon. Member for Northavon has admitted that they would have been even worse off. Using strange phraseology, he has said that the Liberal Democrats would honour the current commitments. I do not know what that means, especially as their intention would be to incorporate them into the pension. That would mean that the money would be taxable, as distinct from not being taxed as now. The hon. Gentleman has not committed his party to continuing the winter fuel payment as such. He sits there giving a twitch of his head, which I cannot interpret, but he is certainly not springing to his feet to deny what I say.We have no guarantee whatever that the Liberal Democrats will continue with the free TV licence, even for over-75s. Furthermore, they claimed in one of their other "Focus" leaflets, which was circulated in my constituency, that the Labour Government would force pensioners to collect their pensions through bank accounts, although they knew--if they did not know, they should have done--that the Prime Minister personally promised that pensioners would continue to be able to collect their pensions from their local sub-post offices weekly and in cash. The "Focus" leaflets have turned lying and deception into such an art form that any minute now, the Liberal Democrats will apply for a lottery grant for them.
In a recent asylum debate, the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) gave
- an undertaking, on behalf of my party, that we will seek to deal with any matter in our party that other people are concerned about.--[Official Report, 12 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 447.]
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