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Mr. Hood: I am sorry if I have led my right hon. Friend to believe that not all the residents have a warden; that is not the case. The warden services all 30 households on the complex equally, not just the four houses on to which her flat has been built.
Estelle Morris: My hon. Friend has not misled me at all. He made that clear. There was a lack of clarity in my phrasing of the situation, and I am glad that he has put that right.
In this case, there are 30 units of accommodation. I can see that one warden can provide a service for all those units, and do so reasonably well. But what happens if there are 50, 60 or even 156 units? What happens if the council claims that one warden, attached to one of the units, is providing a service for the other 155 units?
I know that that is not the situation in my hon. Friend's constituency, but it demonstrates the difficulty of drawing boundaries. I have looked at the plan of the complex and I deem, as he would, that any warden living there can offer a service to all his constituents living there. However, I urge him to accept that making law and regulations to include certain constituents but exclude the rest is nigh on impossible.
Mr. Hood: I know that my right hon. Friend is not looking for excuses to justify the unjustifiable, but the council did not build a complex of 45 houses, including 30 units of sheltered accommodation, to deal with the television licence issue but because it was a good and sensible thing to do. Local authorities have a legal responsibility to service people in need of sheltered accommodation and care. If my right hon. Friend does not mind my saying so, it is like chasing rainbows.
Estelle Morris: I take my hon. Friend's point, but the fact is that regulations were drawn up following abuse by local authorities that tried to include in the scheme units of accommodation that should not have been included. Our debate demonstrates the difficulty of getting a set of criteria that includes people who should have a concessionary licence and excludes people who should not.
May I draw my hon. Friend's attention, although perhaps I should not, to a group of people who would never qualify—pensioners under 75 on low incomes who do not live in sheltered accommodation? Whatever we do about concessionary allowances for people with disabilities and pensioners, we constantly come across anomalies. The problem with the present scheme is that we are trying to define a group of people with a shared need according to the houses or accommodation in which they live, which is nonsensical and illogical. If we were starting from scratch and said that we would like to give financial help to a group of people who are old or disabled and are on low incomes, have served their community and could be socially excluded if they do not have access to television, nobody in their right mind would want to define the houses that they live in before giving them a concessionary licence. Whoever responds to such a debate in the House and whoever introduces it will end up with that problem.
Estelle Morris: I do not like not taking interventions in an Adjournment debate, but I shall give way to my hon. Friend and then deal with his solution to the problem.
Mr. Hood: Perhaps I am pre-empting my right hon. Friend's response, but my solution was to give concessionary TV licences to all the elderly.
Estelle Morris: In an ideal world in which our Treasury colleagues are even more generous than normal, I would agree. In some ways, that would be a preferable solution, because the concessionary licence fee is subsidised by other licence payers. It is paid for by the BBC from its settlement, and is administered, as my hon. Friend knows, by the licensing authority acting on behalf of the BBC, not by the Government. To make things clear for my hon. Friend's constituents, under the criteria that I set out, the licensing authority has no discretion whatsoever. If it had, it would be making up the law as it went along, resulting in appeals and judicial reviews. The matter would come back to the House, which would be difficult. The funding for concessionary licences for the over-75s introduced by the Government comes from taxpayers or Treasury money. Those of us who pay income tax on higher incomes subsidise free licences for the over-75s. I believe that that is a better and fairer way of dealing with the issue. I know how assiduous my hon. Friend has been in fighting for support for pensioners, who are usually on a lower income, and for an end to pensioner poverty. He was generous enough to recognise the work that the Government have done.
The decision to give the free licence to those over 75 may seem arbitrary. Why not give it to those over 70 or over 65? The average income of pensioners over 75 was £19 a week lower than that of pensioners under 75, so we have done right by targeting the pensioners in greatest need. The Treasury moved in the right direction by targeting that group of pensioners. As a result, 3.8 million people now get free licences. The concessionary scheme, about which my hon. Friend and I have been arguing, only ever helped 650,000 people. With one generous move from the Treasury and a huge
commitment from the Labour Government, 3.8 million people now get free licences, as opposed to 650,000 who paid £5.Of course, it would be possible to extend the scheme to the over-70s, the over-65s or the over-60s. We could bring the age further and further down. It is a matter of judgment for the Treasury how it spends the money that we collect from the people whom we represent. If we extended the free licence scheme to the over-60s, the total cost would be £956 million. If it were extended to all households with someone over 65, it would cost £836 in total. If all households with someone over 70 were eligible, the cost would be £616 million in total. By giving a free licence to the over-75s, we have undertaken a huge financial commitment, which has helped more than 3.8 million people. We have made a start.
My hon. Friend made a powerful case for a system for helping our pensioners, who tend to be on lower incomes and are at risk of social exclusion. The television is often their sole companion, especially during the cold, dark nights. He knows that I am not in a position to commit the Government, but I undertake to make his views known to the Treasury. All I ask in return is that he explain as best he can that his constituents in McLean gardens are on the rough end of a fairly tricky piece of legislation. It offers them no money and no concession, but I can hope only that the debate makes them feel that somebody understands their plight, and that they have an MP who has argued robustly on their behalf.
- Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Eleven o'clock.
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