House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Jul 2003 (pt 23)

Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): Given that my hon. and learned Friend has sympathy for the new clause and the amendments, would it not be proper for the Government to respond by adopting his Bill and my Bill, and to say that they will work them into a new form? That would at least send out a clear message that they believe that there is a pensions crisis and that they are trying to grapple with it—they have failed to grapple with it up to now.

Mr. Garnier: I could not agree more. My Bill is the third Bill on this subject, and I make no claims for originality. Until my Bill came out of Committee last week, it was identical to that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry). As far I can tell, it is little different from that promoted a little while ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill).

The Government cannot have been taken by surprise by either the policies behind my Bill or the thrust of the Bill of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. They cannot have been taken by surprise by the growing fears for their future prosperity of those who are already of or who are about to enter pensionable age. Those matters have been on the table for months and months, and they are getting worse.

The hon. Member for Brent, North almost begged for congratulation on having gone to the Vote Office to get the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988, which is a large volume. He would have been derelict in his duty as a parliamentarian if he had not gone and got the 1988 Act, which my Bill would amend. It is not a matter for congratulation but a matter of common sense that he went to get it. I trust that Government Members—this was their job on 7 March on Second Reading—have taken the time to study the 1988 Act and to interweave it with my Bill to allow them fully to understand the issues that we are discussing.

I shall end my remarks because I want to hear what the Minister has to say about the succeeding Government amendments. Because I suspect that I shall

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not have another opportunity to address you on this subject, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I say in advance that I have no quarrel with new clause 3.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Even at this late stage, the hon. and learned Gentleman should not stretch the rules of order to the extent of discussing amendments that are not in this group.

Mr. Garnier: I merely seek to engage in the same constructive behaviour as the Minister, who has taken that approach since he took charge of the Bill a little while ago.

I am acutely aware that we are in the last six minutes of the Bill's life. I want to take the opportunity offered by the discussion on the new clauses and amendments to thank all those, including the Minister, who have supported me in getting the Bill this far. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) for his hard work and, indeed, the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat members of the Committee. I also want to thank the Retirement Income Reform Campaign, which has given me sterling support on both the technicalities of the Bill and the wider policy issues. Without its support, the Bill would not have got this far.

In conclusion on this group of amendments, the ideas behind the Bill are ones that the Government must come to terms with, and they must do so very quickly. They have no time to waste. I suspect that between now and November, when I assume that the next Session will begin, the Treasury will need to do a great deal of work to produce the detail of a pensions law that incorporates not only the ideas in this Bill and that of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, but some of the other matters discussed in the discussion papers that the Government have produced over the past few months, and to announce in the Queen's Speech a Bill that deals with the same matters. It is no good the Government saying, "We are looking at this and consulting on it." They have had plenty of time to do that and the time has now come for action.

If the Government introduce early in the next Session a Bill that takes up the points that I have made, as well as those made by the right hon. Gentleman, I shall be prepared to wish them a degree of good will in dealing with this aspect of public policy. On the other hand, if they allow the issue to dry up and wither on the vine, hundreds and thousands of pensioners in this country, as well as the hundreds and thousands of others who will inevitably become pensioners, will reward the Government in the usual way at the next election. I am not suggesting that my Bill alone will be the undoing of this Government, but it is symbolic of a need for them to open their mind, relax and be prepared to take on ideas that come from outside the Treasury.

Retirement income reform is a vast subject and I accept that it is perhaps not always adequately dealt with by Opposition Back-Bench Bills. None the less, the thrust of my Bill and that of the right hon. Gentleman lies in ideas that are worthy of support. They are worthy of constructive support, as well as constructive thought—something that I fear has not always been given to the Bill. It was certainly not given on Second Reading by some of the Minister's hon. Friends.

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On that basis, I shall sit down and prepare to wind up the funeral band.

Mr. Dismore : Obviously, I am not going to talk for two and half hours in this debate. I think the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has probably shot my fox in his last remarks in terms of trying to develop my arguments effectively. I say to him that the only reason why I had to speak at such length in our previous debate was that he did not introduce the Bill properly. I did so not because I was doing the Government's bidding, as he suggested in the personal attack on me that he made at the start of his speech. I have taken a great interest in the issues with which the Bill deals as a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and of its predecessor. Indeed, I have been a member of that Committee for five years or more. I was very concerned that the Bill was inadequate. If he had addressed some of the arguments that I advanced in that two-and-a-half hour speech, we might have been able to make rather more progress. As I recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you called me to order once for quoting some lengthy figures, but I think that the rest of my remarks were in order.

Mr. Garnier: May I tell the hon. Gentleman that, no matter what he intended on that previous occasion, the impression that he inevitably gave was entirely contrary to the expressions that he has just given to the House?

Mr. Dismore: I can only respond by saying that, if the hon. and learned Gentleman had introduced his Bill properly, developed the arguments at length and dealt with some of the issues when they had arisen in debates on similar Bills, we might not have had to spend so much time on the detail. None the less, as I said last time, I am wholly in favour of annuity reform. My concern is that the Bill is simply not the appropriate vehicle. If I may express some agreement with the hon. Gentleman, I hope that the Government will make their own proposals very soon, preferably in the Queen's Speech, to introduce proper annuity reform.

On new clause 2, I have some concerns about the definition of "dependant".

Mr. Frank Field: My hon. Friend said that he hoped that the Government would introduce their own reforms in the next Session. If they fail to do so, may we ask him to adopt the pose of a Trappist monk and remain silent when others of us are trying to push through pension reform?

Mr. Dismore: The answer is that I shall take any Bill as it comes. If the Bill is adequate, I will not have to say anything. If it is woefully defective, as the Bill before us has been during the previous attempts of the Conservative party, I will make the contribution that I should make and point out those defects.

On the meat of new clause 2, I am very concerned about the definition of "dependant". I can illustrate that point in a number of different ways. My first concern is the reference to "a child of the member". A little while ago, in my previous life, I had to represent a family who had been bereaved by the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. The father and the mother had both been killed. The mother had children by a previous marriage who had not been

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formally adopted by the father. The net result was that although the father had assumed financial responsibility for those children, they were not technically his children in law or by blood. That created an enormous series of anomalies that had to be corrected in the courts—

It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.