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Mr. Webb:
The logic of the Minister's argument concerning people who live in care homes is that those
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who pay towards care home costs get the £50, and those who are on pension credit and who do not pay towards the costs get nothing. As he will confirm, these payments are intended to help with council tax. If he is arguing that such people should not receive these payments because they do not pay council tax, what about the 1 million or more pensioners on pension credit who also do not pay council tax? Why are there different rules for the two groups of people?
Malcolm Wicks: I understand the question and it is a perfectly reasonable one. We discussed this issue in Committee, and while the intention behind the £100 payment for this year arises from concern about the burden of council tax, we nevertheless sought to make the payment in a broad-brush way through the winter fuel payment system. Yes, there will be rough edges, and there may even be an element of rough justice here and there, but this is the simplest way to get the money to those who need it.
At the risk of accusing the hon. Member for Northavon of occasionally being inconsistent, I should point out that adopting a more sophisticated system that ties public moneys to the particular burdens facing particular individuals in particular parts of the country, and which allows for whether or not they are in care homes, would take us down a far more complex road. It would probably involve some form of income testing, and I doubt whether he is in favour of such testing in this era.
I do not intend to elaborate further on the issue of hospital downrating, given that we discussed it at considerable length in Committee and divided on it. Clause 8 contains definitions of terms used in the Bill and amendment No. 17 would remove the definition of state pension credit. As I have said repeatedly, we are aligning the rules and procedures for entitlement to payment with those for winter fuel payments—with which such payments will be made—to keep the process simple. Moving away from this tried and tested process would incur additional administrative costs in excess of £20 million and would lead to a delay in the making of payments, at least for some. In the light of that explanation, I hope that the Opposition will consider withdrawing the amendment.
Mr. George Osborne: This has been quite an interesting debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on some of his contributions. I was saddened to see that he did not include on the selection list an amendment that would give everyone who pays council tax a £100 payment. Of course, such a payment was Liberal Democrat policy during the Brent, East by-election, but it was strangely dropped soon afterwards. We are now waiting for the Liberal Democrats' Leicester, South policy.
The Minister rather made my case for me at the end of his speech when he talked about elements of rough justice. He is right, and I made the same point on introducing the amendments: because of the Government's chosen administrative mechanism, some of the people who really should be getting the £100 will lose out. If the £100 payment is linked to people who pay council tax and is designed to help the elderly and those on fixed incomes, those who reach 70 after 26 September but who have paid council tax bills for this year really
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should receive the money. I am not a Department for Work and Pensions official who has pored over this issue—[Interruption.] The Minister pays me the tribute of saying that I would make a very good DWP official, but unfortunately I did not sit my civil service exams all those years ago.
I do not know whether there is a simple way of identifying such people, and the Minister did not explain whether the Government considered paying those who will reach 70 after 26 September. Nor am I sure what devices were at the DWP's disposal, but as the legislation is currently constructed some people will be caught on its rough edges. I suppose that the Government's chosen delivery mechanism does expose the fiction that this payment is linked to council tax, given that some people who do not pay council tax will in fact receive it. The provision has served that purpose if nothing else, but that said, I do not wish to detain the House further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7
1.15 pm
Mr. George Osborne: I beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 4, line 14, leave out clause 7.
Mr. Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 7, in page 4, line 15, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.
No. 20, in title, line 2, leave out from '70' to end of line 3.
Mr. Osborne: These amendments deal with the extraordinary clause 7, which is extraordinary because it gives the Government wide-ranging powers to provide future one-off payments not just to those aged over 70, in the manner we have just discussed, but to those aged over 60. Absolutely no explanation has been given as to why the Government wanted to take that power upon themselves. Of course, if things had not been messed up at the beginning—had the Chancellor not said that primary legislation is required to introduce the measure announced in the Budget—he would not have needed to introduce such primary legislation to give himself this broad-ranging power. I suppose that the DWP said to the Chancellor, "We're going to have to introduce this primary legislation to implement your Budget announcement. I am sorry that we weren't consulted on this and that we have to bring you this bad news, but while we are taking the Bill through the House, why don't we give ourselves a general power to make special one-off payments to those aged over 60?"
What, one wonders, is so special about the age of 60? Will not the general state retirement age be 65 once the retirement age for women is increased? No explanation has been given as to why the age of 60 has been chosen. What payments do the Government envisage making? Perhaps they are a continuation of the payments in respect of council tax. If so, the Government
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presumably expect council tax bills to continue to increase at the same very high rate at which they have increased since they took office. Perhaps they want to ensure that next year, they can give a dollop of money to elderly people to pay for their council tax. Perhaps they will introduce the same mechanism of a qualifying week. Perhaps they will restrict the provision to those over 70, or to those over 60. Perhaps a distinction will be drawn between men and women. Perhaps women over 60 and men over 65 will qualify. However, we know none of these details because no explanation has been given as to why this general power is being included in the Bill.
Presumably, the main reason for the power is to prevent the Chancellor's being embarrassed again, so that he can make such Budget announcements without needing to implement them through primary legislation. The Minister is a clever man, and I well understand why he wants to keep in with the Chancellor at the moment. That is sensible politics, but it is not really a good enough reason to introduce such a wide-ranging power. The Minister can presumably confirm that there is no requirement that such payments be linked to council tax, even in debating terms. Such payments could be for anything: summertime payments, springtime payments, or payments for those aged 77 precisely. This is a very wide-ranging power.
I have decided to try to help the Minister by giving him a menu of options. [Interruption.] As he again says from a sedentary position, I am behaving like a DWP official.
Here is the range of options. I suspect that the Minister will not accept one of them as he would one of the options suggested by DWP officials, but there we are.
Amendment No. 7 would allow the clause to remain in the Bill, but would change the word "may" to "shall" in subsection (1). In other words, if the Government want to take this power upon themselves, they need to tell us what exactly they envisage. If the Government have some scheme that they are dreaming up, let us hear about it now, so that we can decide whether it is good or bad. If it is good, we can allow it to remain in the Bill. Changing the word "may" to "shall" forces the Government's hand. They cannot then put something in the locker and bring it out on some future convenient occasion. They would have to do it now and reveal their hand.
If the Government do not want that and are not dreaming anything up at the moment, I am afraid that amendment No. 8 would be applicable. It would simply remove the clause from the Bill. I should also point out that amendment No. 20 would amend the Bill's long title. That long title is itself something of a giveaway. It says that the Bill is to
"make provision for payments by the Secretary of State to persons over the age of 70; and to enable provision to be made for payments by the Secretary of State to persons over the age of 60."
The extra bit is the new power that the Government are taking upon themselves. As I said, if the Government cannot accept amendment No. 7, they should accept amendment No. 8 and remove the wide-ranging power from the Bill.
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It is easy for Governments and bureaucracies to use every opportunity to accumulate power, even if they do not know when they are going to use it. However, it is not right for Parliament, which exists to safeguard the interests of the taxpayer and to protect the liberties of the subject, to hand over these general powers to the Minister, at least without his having some specific scheme in mind.
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