| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Malcolm Wicks: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This is a simple Bill, as we have discussed, although it has created some controversy. It will make real the promise given in the Budget to pay all eligible households with someone aged over 70 an extra £100 this year, in recognition of the impact of recent council tax increases on the fixed incomes of older people. The payment will be made through the winter fuel payment process. The Bill also provides the power to make regulations under the affirmative procedure to enable other targeted payments to people aged over 60 to be made in the future if circumstances warrant such payments.
The Bill has attracted broad support from all parts of the House and a number of hon. Members have made valuable contributions to its scrutiny. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) tabled a series of probing amendments that allowed us to explore, at some length, the detail of how the payment will be made. That has left us all much wiser, particularly in relation to polygamous marriages, among other things—a subject that provoked some interest in Committee. I also thank the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) for his scrutiny.
The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) has argued eloquently throughout our deliberations that the payment should be both universal and uniform. We, in turn, have explained why it will not and, further, why it cannot be.My hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) and for Watford (Claire Ward) all made timely and constructive contributions to the debates in Committee.On Report, we had a useful run-through of some of the issues. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) made significant contributions.
Although I am happy to reply to any new point that might arise during the debate on Third Reading, I now simply commend the Bill to the House, as it paves the way for us to give financial support to our oldest and some of our most vulnerable pensioners.
1.58 pm
Mr. George Osborne: I will not detain the House for long. Many hon. Members wish to speak on airports and air transport, and I must be back in Committee at 2.30 pm to hear the Minister who is dealing with the Finance Bill answer the point that I made just before the break.
As we have made clear from the beginning, we support the Bill. It is difficult not to support helping elderly people to cope with the very high council tax
8 Jun 2004 : Column 171
increases imposed on them by the Government. However, it is a strange Bill because the Government never intended to introduce it in the first place, but also because although it is intended to help people to pay council tax bills, the payment will go to people who do not pay council tax. It is also strange because it will do nothing to address the problem that the Government claim they seek to address: soaring council tax bills. It is worth reminding people, before Thursday, that those bills have gone up by 69 per cent. since 1997, or the equivalent to 3p on the basic rate of income tax.
The Bill does nothing to address the fundamental problems with the council tax—that work will have to wait. With my good friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), I met the Minister for Local and Regional Government yesterday to discuss the 8.4 per cent. increase in Macclesfield borough council's council tax. It is clear that a range of centrally imposed burdens has caused council tax to increase, but the Bill does nothing to deal with that.
Mr. Webb : I commend the hon. Gentleman for using his lunchtime break from Committee to participate in the debate in the Chamber. As a thoughtful man, has he reflected on why the Government need the Bill? Why did they not simply change the rate of the winter fuel payment at the age of 70?
Mr. Osborne: To be honest, I have had little time for reflection today and I had not considered that. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will elaborate—as long as he does not take 30 minutes to do so.
The measure is necessary because, as the Chancellor admitted in his Budget statement, pensioners on fixed incomes and the many who are on incomes that are linked to prices have a problem paying council tax bills that increase much faster than prices. The Bill does little or nothing to address that problem. That said, however, we shall not oppose it. A lasting solution to some of the problems will probably have to await a Conservative Government.
2.1 pm
Mr. Webb : This is the Bill that happened by accident. The Chancellor came up with a proposal not realising that he needed a Bill to implement it, as we have just heard. The Bill is wholly unamended from Second Reading, so, in the interests of consistency, I shall not encourage my colleagues to vote differently from the way in which they voted then.
The Bill raises a fundamental question. Let us suppose that the Government are right and that we need to deliver £100 to everyone over 70. In that case, why did they not use the existing winter fuel payments mechanism and simply change the rate at the age of 70? I shall be happy to give way to the Minister if he wishes to explain why the Bill is needed, when all it does is replicate the winter fuel payments delivery mechanism. The Government could have increased the winter fuel payment at 70, and the Chancellor could have said that people could spend the money on their council tax if they wanted to. Why did the Government not do that? Presumably, they did not do that because it would have blown the gaff—it would have been an admission that
8 Jun 2004 : Column 172
winter fuel payments are nothing to do with winter fuel, just as the age-related payments in the Bill are nothing to do with council tax. Even if we allow that what the Government want to do is correct, why is the Bill needed?
Obviously, without the Bill we would not have been able to scrutinise the measure as we have, but the Government's approach shows a degree of inconsistency. Our greatest concern about the measure is less the money that is paid than the money that might be paid with negligible scrutiny. The Division that we have just had focused on that specific issue. We do not want the Bill to set a precedent. We do not want Bills such as this one to appear in future—Bills that not only enable the Government to do what they want in a panic, but give them sweeping powers to do similar things in future with even less scrutiny. I hope that the Government hear the message loud and clear: although they won the Division, neither this House nor the other place will tolerate Governments giving themselves such sweeping powers in future. I hope that Ministers in other Departments, who no doubt hang on every word of our debates, also take that message to heart.
The most interesting point to emerge from our discussions was made by the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) in his valuable contribution this afternoon. He said that Governments need powers to do things in a hurry—I think that that is a fair reflection of what he said. There is a saying: "Legislate in haste, repent at leisure". Our concern is that Governments acting in a hurry because they have got themselves into a mess set a dangerous precedent. To be fair, the hon. Gentleman suggested how that problem might be dealt with, but when the living standards of many of our most elderly and vulnerable citizens have been allowed to be severely damaged by an unfair local tax system and a local tax rebate system that does not work, and the Government's reaction is to invent a new scheme to tackle the problem because "something must be done", that is a dreadful approach to legislating.
The roots of the problem are two things that do not work. We have a local tax system that is unfair because it is not properly related to ability to pay, and a local tax rebate system that fails woefully to reach the people whom it needs to reach. If both those problems were resolved, the Bill would not be needed. If local tax reflected ability to pay, the Bill would be unnecessary because people over 70 would not be subject to an unfair burden. Failing that, if the rebate system worked as it should, the Bill would be unnecessary because poor people over 70 would not be paying. The Bill is needed because there are people aged over 70 who are poor and who are not getting the rebates to which they are probably entitled, but rather than make that system work, the Government invent another system that will, no doubt, cost millions of pounds to administer.
The Bill is an admission of failure—an admission that we have an unfair local tax system and that the rebate system designed to deal with that does not work. It introduces yet another scheme, one that will last one year. That raises another question: why is the measure to last for only one year? What are we waiting for? Surely, the local tax system will still be unfair and the rebates will still not reach the people who are supposed to get them the year after, so what is coming down the track? We hope that it is a fair local tax system, but we have seen no indication that that is what we will get.
8 Jun 2004 : Column 173
This is a real sticking-plaster Bill. It is a response to two separate failures of Government—the failure to introduce a fair local tax system and the failure to introduce a fair rebate system. What makes the position worse is that there is a third failure of Government: their failure to support pensioners properly. If pensioners had a decent income in the first place, they would be able to afford to pay council tax. It is because so many pensioners over 70 do not have an adequate income—in seven years in office, the Government have failed to deliver one—that the Bill is needed. The Bill could almost be called the triple admission of failure Bill—failure to deliver a fair local tax system, failure to deliver an effective rebate system and, crucially, failure to ensure that our oldest and most vulnerable citizens have a decent income.
This is a sad day. Obviously, we will nod the Bill through because none of us will deny our elderly and vulnerable citizens £100, but would it not have been a better world if the Bill had not been necessary and the Government had not failed time and again on key policies?
2.7 pm
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |