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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. Chris Pond): This has been a good debate on a subject of great importance to all our constituents. We have heard contributions from two former Secretaries of State and a former Minister of State, and most hon. Members have paid tribute to the most recent Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith), with whom I had the privilege to work, and I can confirm that those tributes are well deserved.

We have heard thoughtful and moving speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter), for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) and for High Peak (Tom Levitt). My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak described the plight of his constituents who are affected by Turner and Newall's difficulties, as did the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams).

I thank the Opposition for their generosity in using their parliamentary time on a subject that we are delighted to debate in the House, in the country and on the doorsteps in the months ahead. We are happy to debate it because, as my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions told the House, we are proud of our record. This year, pensioner households will be £26 per week better off in real terms than they were when we took over, and the poorest pensioner households are £33 per week better off than they were under the Tory Government.

We are proud that as a result of pension credit and the other measures we have taken there are now 1.8 million fewer pensioners living in poverty: poverty that not only disfigured their lives in their final years but was a scar on the nation; an injustice made worse during the years in which the Conservatives were in government.

We are proud that we have boosted pensioner incomes by £10 billion a year, compared with the £10 billion that the Conservatives lifted from the pockets and purses of pensioners when they were in office.

We are proud that it is a Labour Government who have brought forward measures to restore security and public confidence in pensions. We are doing that through our proposals in the Pensions Bill, to which Conservative Members declined to give a Second Reading, as we will continue to remind them, which sets up a pension protection fund giving protection to more than 10 million members of defined benefit schemes to ensure that the tragedy faced by thousands of people left with neither a job nor a pension should never happen again. We are doing it through the £400 million that my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East, when he was Secretary of State, secured for the financial assistance scheme to help many of those who have already lost out.

So we are very happy to debate these issues on the basis of our own record and our plans for the future, which, despite the demographic challenges outlined by my hon. Friend in his opening remarks, provide a firm foundation for secure retirement in the future. We are also happy to debate them because of the record and
 
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plans of the Opposition parties, both of which would have pensioners believe that they will spend an extra £16 billion on their plans, given the chance. The question has to be: who will pay for it and how?

The Tories would abolish the state second pension, which gives 20 million people the chance to build up a decent second pension for the first time. Five million of them are low earners, 2.5 million are carers, most of them are women, and 2.5 million are disabled people with broken work records. The Conservatives, if they had their way, would let pension credit, in the phrase of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson), "wither on the vine"; or, in the words of the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), "die a natural death". I will look forward to seeing them on the doorsteps in the weeks and months ahead telling that to the 3 million pensioners who are each receiving, on average, £42 in pension credit. Perhaps those hon. Gentlemen would like to come with me to Kent to tell the pensioner in her 90s who was recently visited by the Pension Service to be told that she was entitled to £66.92 a week in pension credit, with a back payment of £2,678, that she will get no help at all from their plans for basic state pensions. If they would like to come with me, I will give them a lift.

Around half of those entitled to pension credit are single women and more than a quarter are women aged over 80. Those are the people who would pay the price for Tory pension plans.

We have heard certain right hon. and hon. Members allege that pension credit discourages people from making proper provision towards their pensions. I have to tell the House that the reality is quite the opposite. The purpose of the pension credit is to encourage people to make some provision for themselves. Indeed, the Financial Services Authority concludes:

"The Pension Credit will mean that for most people, most of the time, it will pay to have saved".

That is the very basis of our policy.

I have said who will lose from the Opposition's plan to uprate basic state pensions in line with earnings.

Now there's an idea, but I wonder who scrapped the earnings link in the first place. Who called such a policy "wild and uncosted"? Who called it, "not well targeted" and "not affordable"? Who said in January:

"Breaking the earnings link in 1980 played a crucial role in this picture of British success . . . a triumphant success"?

We all know that it was the hon. Member for Havant, who tries to persuade us and pensioners that he is a reformed character. He is going through a form of restorative justice, telling pensioners how sorry he is to have cut their pensions in the past. He is a reformed character, and so, apparently, is his current leader, who was in government throughout the period when pensioners' incomes were decimated.

We are not daft and neither are millions of Britain's pensioners, many of whom are here today to lobby the House. The hon. Member for Eastbourne, who is sitting next to the hon. Member for Havant, let the cat out of
 
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the bag when, in the presence of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary with responsibilities for the disabled, he told the National Pensioners Convention:

"I'm here for your votes".

Nice try, but I am sure that members of the convention will see through such opportunism, as we do.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Eagle): They booed him.

Mr. Pond: I fear that the hon. Gentleman was booed. The Opposition will be judged on their record, not the flannel that they produced today.

I have respect for many of those who argue for reintroducing the earnings link, including many who lobbied the House today, but not the opportunists on the Opposition Benches. However, it would take 14 years for a basic pension that was uprated by earnings to reach the guaranteed level of pension credit. In that time, the poorest pensioners would gain nothing. Many of them do not have that time to spare. The earnings link is promised only for the first Parliament—perhaps four or five years—of a Tory Government.

The Liberal Democrats also want to spend £16 billion on what they call a citizens pension. It would mean an extra £100 a month for those over 75, no questions asked. How will they pay for it? They intend to scrap the Department of Trade and Industry: out goes investment in world-class science and technology; out goes the £2 billion that the Government are investing in the post office network, and out goes the Department that administers the national minimum wage and protects the rights of working people and consumers. Of course, those plans, too, would do nothing for the poorest pensioners.

Those are the plans of the Opposition for state pensions. They are opportunist, half-baked and barely half-believable. What are their plans for private and occupational pensions? Silence. They have none. They had nothing to offer today and they have nothing to offer for building security in the long term.

Pensions are of vital concern to all our constituents, of all ages, and the debate has highlighted again the challenges that we face. Those challenges—the changing landscape of occupational pension provision, stock market pressures, and the demographics of increasing longevity—are very real. They have to be taken seriously and we must have the long-term plans to deal with them. We are prepared to have the courage to take on those difficult challenges: to rebuild confidence and security in occupational and private pensions; to ensure that we do not use the threat of poverty in retirement as the only incentive—as offered by Opposition parties—to save. We want to give people genuine incentives to save.

Sir John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West) (Con): Will the Under-Secretary give way?

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