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9 Mar 2010 : Column 42WH—continued
In the shadow Chancellor's speech at the age of austerity conference-if I may call it that-he announced dramatically that he would be straight with the British people and that he would put on record exactly how he would pay for the desirable aim of re-linking the basic state pension to earnings. It is nice when a sinner repenteth, as it was the Conservatives who broke the link 30 years ago. He announced dramatically that, in this age of austerity, he would bring forward the increase in the state pension age to 2016-he did not mention the gender of those who would be due to retire and nor did he speak of a review-and he then announced the amount of money that would be saved, as the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) said.
In that age of austerity speech, the shadow Chancellor implied strongly that the two things would happen at the same time and that one would pay for the other. He cited that as an example of a Conservative Government-in-waiting who would take tough choices, and set out that they would give a little bit with one hand and pay for it by taking a little bit away with the other. It was only when he was questioned following the speech that the policy began to unravel and look slightly messy. The Conservatives had clearly forgotten that the women's pension age was due to rise to 65 over the next 10 years under legislation passed by the previous Conservative Government so that it would be equalised with that of men by 2020.
Moving on to the implications of the shadow Chancellor's dramatic announcement on state pension age at the age of austerity conference, it appeared that the policy could cost men who are now six years away from retirement £8,000 a year because they would have to work for longer. Women would have to make a similar sacrifice and it could cost them up to £15,000. Conservative central office realised that the shadow Chancellor might have misspoken, to use a popular term, so the Conservatives then said there would have to be a review. The default option, following that bold, dramatic announcement, was therefore a review, and that was the position to which the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) attempted to stick doggedly this morning, even though what would happen under that review seems already to have been decided.
That review, however, would get us into a messy situation and give rise to questions that the hon. Member for Northavon and I have sought to bring to the fore. Under European law, the state pension age has to be equalised-that is the view of the EU Commission. I know the shadow Chancellor and many of his friends on the Conservative Front Bench try not to take much notice of that institution but, nevertheless, we are signed up to the basic rules that it promulgates, one of which is that there should be equal access to pensions and other such benefits across the genders.
Those of us who remember the introduction of winter fuel payments will know that the disparities in the pension age meant that men over 60 took the Government to court so that they would be allowed to access those payments, even though they were not retired, and they succeeded under European law. Since 1995, the British Government have said that they will equalise the state pension age gradually to give people the appropriate
time to plan for their retirement so that they know exactly when they will be due to retire. It is hard to imagine that the EU Commission would be happy to be suddenly confronted with a new non-equal pension age that was clearly against European law and that had been promulgated on a whim at a Conservative party conference in an age of austerity speech. I suggest that the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham get his party's lawyers to take a much closer look at what seems to be the mess of Conservative policy on the retirement age.
One thing is absolutely clear: Conservative policy is in a terrible muddle. Even if it were not, it would certainly cost all men who would have to work a year longer and were six years away from retirement in 2010 an extra £8,000 a year in forgone pension. In addition, if the policy could be put in place in the way in which the Conservatives intend, which I doubt would happen, it would cost women who were due to retire in 2020 at least £5,000, and perhaps an average of £15,000.
The Conservatives need to have a closer look at what on earth they are doing. Clearly, however, people in their 50s who are looking forward to retirement will know that, should there be a Conservative Government, they would certainly lose out as their retirement age would be changed in a fast and arbitrary way. I agree with the hon. Member for Northavon that making such sudden changes to the retirement age in a short space of time would be less than helpful. Such a policy would not allow the people who were caught up by the changes to plan for them appropriately, and would create uncertainty about the retirement age in the future.
Mr. Hands: The hon. Lady's argument does not wash. Obviously, in a perfect world, we would want notification of the state pension age to be given as early as possible, but we are talking about dates such as 2016 and 2020 at the earliest. I contrast that with the Government's £5 billion a year raid on pension funds that was announced with absolutely no notification whatsoever.
Angela Eagle: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to stop believing his own myths about so-called raids on pension funds. After the changes to the tax law to which he referred, the balance of profit in pension funds rose substantially over the next three years. It was only when the dotcom bubble burst that pension funds went into deficit. He needs to consider cause and effect before he pontificates in front of hon. Members.
I was about to agree with the hon. Member for Northavon about the sudden changes to retirement plans that were put before the electorate in the age of austerity speech made by the shadow Chancellor. Such sudden shifting can make people unsure about what their retirement age will be and whether it will be arbitrarily changed, and they then get worried about whether it is worth saving in pensions at all. It is difficult enough to get people to save into pensions. They often think of reasons why they should spend their money now, which is not surprising in a very consumer-orientated society in which mass advertising campaigns encourage instant consumption rather than saving. Those of us in government who wish to encourage saving must fight against that. However, when arbitrary changes in the state pension age are announced on a
whim at a Conservative party conference for dramatic effect, it does not give people confidence that things will not be changed again.
John Mason: I intervene on the Minister to raise the same point that she made when she intervened on me. She used the word "encourage". Will the Government totally rule out going beyond encouragement and to a degree of compulsion?
Angela Eagle: We are in the middle of putting into effect the biggest landmark pension changes for probably 60 or 70 years, which involve automatic enrolment. That is the nearest step short of creating a compulsion to save, in that it tries to work with the idea of inertia to encourage people to save. In other words, people will have to opt out of automatic enrolment if they are active in the workplace. The most sensible approach is to put the Pensions Commission's proposal in place, establish a national employment savings trust, and have automatic enrolment.
The hon. Gentleman will know that there will be re-enrolment every three years. We will have to see how that works. We always have to keep these things under review, but we have not yet seen this landmark pension reform working, so it is far too early to consider what levels of opt-out there might be, how we can encourage people to stay in the scheme and to value pension saving on top of the basic state pension, and how to remind people that they might be living 20 or 30 years after their retirement ages, even following the rise in retirement age that we are discussing thanks to the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead. We must keep such matters under review.
Part of the difficulty with pensions policy is that it is very long term but, in our Parliament, we love to do new things and to change and switch about. We have to
get the new system bedded in, see how it works and identify the levels of opt-out before we consider the idea of compulsion again. We must make it as easy as possible for people to save. We must encourage and reward them for doing so, particularly when they have medium or lower earnings.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham also talked about pensions apartheid, which I thought was very telling. He said that 85 per cent. of people in the public sector have access to an extra workplace pension when the proportion in the private sector has gone down because of employers' lack of willingness to offer extra pension saving. What he did not say when he used those alarmist words and talked darkly about another review-he would not say this before an election-is that that review will no doubt consider what his party could do to destroy public sector pension provision.
I suggest that everyone who works in the public sector take close account of what the hon. Gentleman has been saying about their pensions. He did not mention that the average public sector pension payment is between £4,000 and £5,000. We are talking about part-time women workers, porters, cleaners, people who work in schools and those who do not have huge earnings. It has always struck me as odd to say that we should try to make pension savings in the private sector by destroying pensions in the public sector.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead on securing the debate. The Government's view is that the increases in the state retirement age that have been legislated for are appropriate at the moment. The state retirement age has to be kept under review, but clearly we do not wish to make sudden and dramatic changes that will destabilise people's confidence and mean that they will approach retirement age only to have that arbitrarily shifted away from them with minimum notice-we will not do that.
Tankers (Lyme Bay)
12.30 pm
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con): The debate is about a matter of unashamed local concern rather than major national concern, although it affects not only my constituents in West Dorset, but those of other hon. Members in nearby constituencies-one such Member is seeking to enter the debate and will do so when she chooses. The extraordinary and simple fact is that several tankers are currently parked, to use a colloquial term, off Lyme bay. That is not a matter of dispute between anyone and anyone else, but simply a matter of plain fact.
My second statement is equally uncontroversial, although it is certainly a statement of values, if not one of fact. Lyme bay is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I do not say that unadvisedly, because it is a world heritage site. It has been recognised by UNESCO as one of the most important places in the world, after considerable efforts by many people involved, including myself. That was not because of its natural beauty, which is wholly outstanding, but its extraordinary geological significance, as it is the part of the world most responsible for the evolution of modern theories of evolution. It is the place where the significance of fossils was first understood, and it still yields the most astonishing variety of evidence about the planet's very ancient history.
When one considers the bay's astonishing beauty, combined with its great scientific importance, one might conclude that our laws and administrative systems should protect it. After all, as a country we have over a long time developed a whole array of protections for important sites. We have areas of outstanding natural beauty and rules about what can and cannot be done in them, sites of special scientific interest and rules about what one can and cannot do in them, and we have areas that are preserved in one way or another and rules about what one can and cannot do in them.
The House has just gone to the trouble, with considerable cross-party consensus, of passing a Bill to protect the marine environment, for which I and others campaigned for many years, and it is highly relevant to Lyme bay. I congratulate the Minister and others on the new Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, which my party supported, as did Liberal Democrat Members. The Act was created largely to preserve and enhance the marine environment-and quite rightly, too. Considerable powers have been given to various bodies to ensure that the marine environment is as well protected as the land-based environment has been by a succession of legislation and administrative action over the past 50 years.
Given all that, the average punter or MP might be forgiven for thinking that there would naturally be some method for ensuring that the biggest ecological risks were minimised in the most important sites. Therefore, when the tankers arrived off the coast of Lyme bay and various local groups began to agitate about the matter-I pay particular tribute to the wildlife groups that brought it to everyone's attention-it seemed natural to me that Ministers, whom I have mentioned in relation to the 2009 Act, would be concerned about it, would have an array of powers at their disposal to combat those ecological risks and would take action. After several days I discovered
that nothing seemed to be happening and wrote to the Department to ask what could be done. I pay tribute to the Minister for the polite and relatively timely response, which I guess was as good as one could expect to receive. To paraphrase-the Minister may wish to qualify my account-the letter essentially stated, "Yes, this is happening and we accept that there is an issue, but unfortunately it is not unlawful in any way for those giant objects with large amounts of toxic material in them to park there more or less indefinitely. We are very sorry, but although we love you dearly there is nothing we can do for you." That is broadly what the letter stated.
Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and for representing that wonderful coastline. I, too, have received one of those bland letters in response to inquiries about the tankers. Dorset Wildlife Trust's head office is in my constituency, so I am here representing the views of my constituents. I hope that he will agree that there obviously has to be a better solution. Rather than taking risks, the vehicles should not be parked in the bay at all, but perhaps somewhere at Portland. If it is not a question of being able to apply the law, surely some common sense and negotiations could be used.
Mr. Letwin: I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and a little envious that the headquarters of the Dorset Wildlife Trust is in her constituency. I must make a mental note to encourage that admirable organisation to move to my constituency. I accept entirely that she and I are actuated by the same concern to advance the ecological interests of Dorset as a whole, Bournemouth and Poole and a large part of Devon, as we are talking about a pretty widespread area. If the Minister's letter was in good faith and accurate, which I am sure it was, and if he will tell us today that he has no powers to do anything about the matter, then I agree with the hon. Lady that what is required is the taking of powers to do something about the situation, or some administrative action that would make it unnecessary to have those powers by achieving a result. That is exactly the burden of my tale.
I am not an administrative lawyer, so I do not know whether the Minister has powers to deal with the problem, but I take it at face value that he does not. I do know, however, that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for the UK to have a huge array of environmental and ecological legislation and yet be unable to stop large objects containing large amounts of highly toxic material parking in an area where, in bad weather conditions, for instance, there might be a catastrophe and a spillage-we hope that that will not happen-the ecological significance of which would be colossal. Clearly, we must be able to stop that. It makes no sense for a UK Minister to be unable to stop that happening.
I was therefore surprised and disappointed to discover not that the Minister did not have the powers, though such things can happen, nor that he is concerned, which is a fine thing, but that there was no sense of urgency about doing something about the situation. We need a sense of urgency; something needs to be done.
If you, Mr. Bayley, and I were both in the next Parliament, as I hope I shall be-[Interruption.] I say that only to avoid any suggestion that I am talking
down the Conservative party. If we were to find ourselves again in this Chamber discussing this subject, but what we were discussing in those circumstances was an ecological catastrophe as a result of the very thing that I am talking about-a weather condition leading to a spillage disaster-it would be impossible for whoever would then be the Minister to explain why action had not been taken to prevent it when so clearly it was possible to envisage that it might happen.
Thinking oneself into that position, I do not see how a Minister could possibly stand up in good faith at that stage and say, "We were warned, we knew that this could happen, we watched the ships sit there but didn't do anything about it, they did spill, and now we're very sorry." That would be an impossible position to be in. The Minister would have to say, "This is a catastrophe. I'm off." The time to take action is now, before anything happens, and I do not see any reason to delay. The time to start taking action is today; in fact, the time to take action was some weeks back when the matter first came to light.
The last thing I want to say is that I shall not in any way try to engage in the naive action of specifying from the outside what the Minister needs to do. I am perfectly aware that he has what I do not: a Department full of people who are expert about these matters, who are intelligent, who are knowledgeable about the kind of administrative action that could be taken, and who, I hope and believe, know the actors involved. I am not in that position; I am just trying to represent my constituents.
I am making a point that seems to be irrefutable: we ought not to be bearing this risk. If the Government were properly in control of the ecological agenda, they would deal with it, and I am asking the Minister to deal with it. Whether he deals with it by negotiating positions-by going out there and trying to use the considerable leverage of the UK Government to persuade the owners of the tankers to do something different with them-as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) suggested, whether he discovers some recess of the law that allows him to engage in further regulation that would give him powers that he could use as leverage or directly impose, or whether he needs to engage in legislation, whatever it is that he needs to do, he needs to do it; and it is him, not me, who needs to decide what it is. My point is simply that it needs to be done.
12.43 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Clark): It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr. Bayley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) on securing this important debate. He said at the beginning of his speech that the matter does not affect everyone but that it is important. I concur with that 100 per cent. It is obviously important to his constituents and others who are affected in such a way, but it is also important to the United Kingdom as a whole. Indeed, several other right hon. and hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, and the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), have raised this issue and others about shipping within the area of their own constituency.
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