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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) have both talked about pensioners, but does he not agree that the Government's minimum income guarantee for pensioners is meaningless as long as only pensioners claiming income support qualify for it? Is not it high time that the poorest pensioners should not have to rely on any form of benefit, and that they should be able to survive on the state pension as a minimum income?
Mr. Rammell: I welcome the fact that mine is the first speech today to attract an intervention. The minimum pension guarantee is paid through income support, and the Government are launching the biggest ever advertising campaign to ensure that pensioners apply for it. That is vital, as some pensioners--especially the most elderly--may not be aware that they can claim it, or may find the relevant forms difficult to complete.
The Government have been in power for three years; is what the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) said the view of his party? If so, why did the previous Conservative Government introduce no proposals along those lines in the 18 years that they were in power? Claims made in opposition ring hollow in such circumstances.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Richard Body (Boston and Skegness) rose--
Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead) rose--
Mr. Rammell: I will not give way, even to a Labour Member, as other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate.
Restoring the link between pensions and earnings is the best way to ensure that pensioners share in prosperity as the economy grows. However, there is a longer-term
problem. The Government acted with the best of intentions when they introduced the minimum pension guarantee but, if the basic state pension remains indexed only to prices, the gap between it and the minimum pension guarantee will grow smaller. As a result, more people will become eligible for the minimum pension guarantee, and therefore for means-tested benefits.In the longer term, that will reduce the incentive to save. I am not sure that that is the objective that the Government set out to attain when they made the essential and very welcome changes with regard to the minimum pension guarantee. I know that the Treasury has made projections about the consequences and cost of restoring the link between pensions and earnings, and I acknowledge that money has to come from somewhere.
However, I think it is possible to restore the link in practice, even if we do not restore it in principle. By that, I mean that we have to provide the public expenditure required, but that part of the problem is confidence in the City and elsewhere that our longer-term public spending plans and projections of public spending as a proportion of national income add up. If we make that longer-term commitment, the figures rise and there is a confidence problem. If we uprate pensions yearly according to the increase in wages instead of prices, we will get a better and shorter-term solution.
The Government have done far more for pensioners than the Conservative Government ever did, but I want us to go further and introduce a substantial rise in the basic state pension this year. I should like us to consider the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings. If that could all be achieved by the time we come back from the summer recess, I would be enormously grateful.
12.51 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): I am delighted to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in this summer Adjournment debate. Before I raise two constituency issues that have national implications, I shall respond to the hon. Members for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) and for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner), who have been trying to curry favour with pensioners by suggesting that the Labour party will give them a better deal than the Conservative party will. They have both misrepresented my party's views, as articulated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). Under his proposals, pensioners over 75 would have £10 a week more in certain circumstances. To say that we have no proposals to improve the lot of pensioners is simply not true.
Mr. Rammell: I do not want to prolong this discussion, but is the hon. Gentleman aware of the House of Commons Library analysis showing that his party's proposal would simply take money from one pocket and put it into another? It would raise the income of pensioners over the age of 75 by only 18p a week.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I do not accept that. As I understand it, my right hon. Friend's proposals involve £300 million of new money. What is more, they would reduce the bureaucracy that pensioners face when they have to claim for payments. I came across a pensioner in
my constituency the other day who had a degree in social sciences. She said that by the time she had ploughed through the five pages of gobbledegook to claim the winter fuel payment, she still did not understand it. If she cannot understand it, that shows that there must be red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy. We will cut through some of that unnecessary red tape, and thereby reduce the cost of government. However, I do not want to be tempted too far down that line.The first issue I want to raise concerns the National Fire College at Moreton-in-Marsh. I obtained a leak from the commandant of the college, Mr. Terry Glossop, to whom I pay tribute. He was brought in after the college had been making losses for years and had had problems with the Home Office. He introduced a new management team, turned the budget round, and the college is now making a profit.
Faced with the problem of the college, the Labour Government announced an options review when it came to power in 1997. It has taken all this time to come to a conclusion on that review. I heard from the commandant yesterday that the Government were planning to answer a parliamentary question. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), confirmed that. I tabled a written question yesterday. The answer still has not come through: I gather that there is some problem with the drafting. I thank the Minister for what I believe will be in that answer, which is that the college is to remain open. My constituents will be very grateful for that. They will be pleased that the college has a future training United Kingdom firefighters, and that the Government are considering transferring defence firefighting training to the college, thus ensuring it an even better future. That was also part of the previous Government's proposals for the college.
The problem now is that, having taken three years to announce the conclusion of the review, the Government intend to bring in consultants to work out the way forward. Although my constituents will be pleased that the college is to remain open, there is still no assurance on its way forward.
The college needs that assurance rapidly. Foreign firefighters thinking of coming to the college have to know what facilities the college is likely to be able to offer. The college desperately needs investment in new facilities, but it cannot obtain it until the consultants' report has been finalised. I therefore urge the Minister to urge Home Office Ministers to get on with ensuring completion of the consultants' report, so that my constituents can know the way forward for the college.
The second, and more substantive, issue that I wish to raise concerns the strategic road A419/A417. I shall try to describe to the House just where the road is, the problems, and then, very briefly, the solution. If one were travelling westwards from London on the M4, left the M4 at Swindon and took the A419/A417--almost completely on dual carriageway--one would reach the M5 at Gloucester. The road bisects the triangle that would be created if one went on the M4 all the way down to Bristol and then up the M5. The road saves about 50 miles compared with following that triangle.
One can drive all the way from Sicily, in southern Italy, to Glasgow on dual carriageways, with the exception of two little links. The first is at Blundson, outside Swindon. I think that that link will be dealt with soon because Swindon is such a rapidly expanding city.
The other link is one of the most environmentally difficult bits of necessary road building in this country. Its environmental significance is similar to that of Twyford down. It is situated right at the top of the Cotswolds area of outstanding natural beauty, on the scarp that goes down into the Cheltenham and Gloucester valley. Standing on the top of that scarp, one has one of the best views in the country. It is a magnificent bit of country. The problem is that no one has yet found a satisfactory way of building a safe dual carriageway over the top of that hill.
We have already had fatalities on the road, and I believe that we shall have more. The road must be completed urgently. Minor works are being proposed, but they are really only tinkering at the edges. They include building a right-hand lane for turning into the Golden Hart pub at Nettleton Bottom; a 40 mph restriction at Stockwell lane; and minor traffic calming as one enters Stockwell. Those minor works will in no way affect the problems.
There are three problems. The first is that there have been fatalities on the single-track road at Nettleton Bottom. We had an horrific case in which an articulated lorry shunted a car into the pub wall and the car's occupants were all killed. There have been other fatalities.
The second problem is that we have very considerable congestion, in the middle of what I call the missing link, at the Air Balloon pub. On a busy summer's morning, the traffic queues can extend six miles towards Cirencester. It is a very considerable environmental problem for my constituents.
The third problem is that not only do my constituents have to put up with long traffic queues--which are caused by national traffic on a national motorway system and are not generated by them--and deal with the fatalities, but some cars leave the road and start, as they say in the trade, rat running through some beautiful Cotswolds villages. It is a very considerable strategic national problem. It is also quite capable of solution.
The most expensive but best solution, which has been investigated by the consulting engineers Mott MacDonald in a desktop study, would be a tunnel. Mott MacDonald estimates that the tunnel would cost about £75 million to £100 million. I have no doubt whatsoever that if we were in France or Switzerland, we would adopt the tunnel solution, because it is by far the most environmentally friendly solution to this national strategic road problem. However, I accept that, in a practical and pragmatic world, that is unlikely ever to happen in this country. One therefore needs to look for other solutions.
The county council, with the Highways Agency and the Government office for the south west, has identified a readily identifiable solution. I urge them all now to get together to pursue that solution, which is a dual carriageway relief road at Nettleton Bottom, a proper roundabout and gyratory system at the Air Balloon pub, and--perhaps the most difficult of all--a fourth lane up Crickley Hill.
Those solutions have been costed at less than £25 million. That sounds a great deal of money, but, in the context of a national road network, I urge all those
agencies that I have already mentioned--the county council highways department, the Government office for the south west, the regional development agency and the Highways Agency--to get together to examine the solution, be ambitious and include it in the 10-year road plan.The money was announced by the Chancellor last week; the solution is perfectly feasible, and should be effected. I hope that my contribution today will hasten a solution so that too many more fatalities do not occur in my constituency before something is done.
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