Pensions Bill

Mike Penning welcomes the Bill, but warns that the Government must restore public trust in pensions which cannot happen until it accepts the ombudsman's report on maladministration.

7.49 pm

Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con): I shall not waste 48 minutes of the House’s time, which is what the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) did. He lambasted the Bill, only to say that he would support it. I, too, support it, and it would have been much easier if he had said that he was going to do so at the start of his speech instead of waffling for 48 minutes.

I welcome many of the Bill’s proposals, and many of today’s contributions have sensibly identified things that need a little tweaking in Committee and at later stages in proceedings. I was interested in what the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) said about the changes that the Bill will bring about, particularly for women and carers. I am a new Member, so this is the first opportunity that I have had to debate the subject, but it is a scandal that women have been treated as second-class citizens in pension entitlement for many years. I was shocked to read a letter from the Office of the Pensions Advisory Service to my mother, who sadly divorced late in life. She had worked throughout her life and, at the beginning of her career, she signed a document and received the married woman’s stamp. She did not realise, however, that she was signing her rights away if her marriage did not last until she reached pensionable age. She is lucky, and she would be happy for me to tell the House that she has been swept off her feet by a wonderful younger man—he is two years her junior—who provides her with the financial security that she deserves. They live in Spain, but she had to endure a degrading experience. She worked all her life and paid her stamp, so it is morally wrong that payment of her pension depended on whether her husband was in work and whether the marriage lasted. The Bill addresses many of the problems experienced by that generation.

The Bill addresses, too, many problems experienced by carers, whom we have all met in our constituency surgeries and during the course of our duties. Their work, dedication and love is flabbergasting, and that applies not just to part-time paid carers but to people who are looking after loved ones at home. I am worried about the problems that carers and workers in other industries may experience if the retirement age is raised to 70, and if the Minister does not have time to deal with my concerns tonight, I am happy for him to write to me. Carers try hard to do everything for their loved ones. They often lift their loved ones when they are not really strong enough to do so, as they hate to ask for help. We must provide that help, but I have visited many carers who try to do everything that they possibly can long after they are physically capable of doing so. I am concerned that carers will be asked to look after their loved ones until they are 60, 65 or 70, although they may not be physically capable of doing so. What back-up mechanisms are there? Hon. Members will know that, all too often, social services do not ask, “How much time can we give?” but “How little time can we give?” One of my constituents is confined to a wheelchair, and suffers from Parkinson’s and an extremely debilitating form of motor neurone disease. He is allowed 10 minutes’ help in the morning to get up, dressed and washed and 10 minutes’ help in the evening. He used to receive 20 minutes’ help and, before that, 30 minutes, but because of financial pressures on social services that period was reduced. I agree that we need to ask for advice from people such as GPs. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) said that GPs will not be interested in doing extra work, but I think that they will be if they are paid for it. If they are not paid, they will not do it, as that is part of their contract.

I am concerned about other workers who will be expected to work until they are nearly 70. I come from a family of construction workers, and I have seen generations of workers do heavy work on construction sites, particularly groundwork. Gentlemen cannot physically do that work once they are in their 60s, and it is degrading for them to be asked to make the tea or undertake other duties on site. They are skilled workers, but their speciality is heavy work, and they cannot go on working in the construction industry until they are 70. I do not know what modelling the Government have done on the opportunities for those workers between the ages of 65 and 70 because, in most cases, they will not be able to carry on working on construction sites. It is important, however, that we do not expect them to undertake degrading duties.

Mark Pritchard: Someone aged 50 or 60 in a construction job may rightly think that they cannot continue to undertake heavy manual labour until they are 70, so they will try to retrain. However, as a result of the Government’s cuts in further and higher education funding for elderly people, they cannot do so, and thus cannot escape the trap highlighted by my hon. Friend.

Mike Penning: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. There is a difference between longevity—we all know that people are living much longer—and physical capability and ailments that prevent someone from working. I am almost 50 and—perhaps because I was part of the Airborne and because I was a fireman—I am starting to suffer from arthritis. If I was doing a physical job in the construction industry and my condition worsened, I would not be able to carry on. I would be faced with a decision. Would the doctor sign me off, because I was not physically capable of doing my job? Would I attempt to retrain or would I take a job stacking shelves? All those options need to be modelled by the Government if we wish to extend the retirement age—and I accept the reasons for doing so—as that extension is not just about the age at which people die but whether they are fit and capable of working. We must not subject them to degrading treatment as they grow older.

The hon. Member for Northampton, North raised the important issue of the disability living allowance, payment of which stops as soon as the claimant reaches retirement age. DLA entitles most people to a mobility vehicle, so if we extend the retirement age to 70, we must make sure that we extend DLA, too. All the benefits that stop at 65 for a DLA claimant should continue to 70. We could even consider extending DLA into retirement, because someone who has had a mobility vehicle for many years has come to rely on it to get out of the house and remain active. As soon as they retire, however, that entitlement stops.

Miss Begg: If someone is awarded DLA before the retirement age they keep it after retirement, but if they do not qualify before retirement age, they cannot receive it once they retire. The only thing that they can receive is attendance allowance.

Mike Penning: That is right, but the position is confusing. I have dealt with constituents in my surgery who have suffered as a result of mistakes in DLA.

The Minister would not expect me to make a speech about occupational pensions without mentioning the theft of pensions from 65,000 pensioners, not least the 700 former Dexion workers in my constituency. That is important to this debate, because it is about trust. The Government have made a huge assumption that many people will open a personal account or a private scheme, to which they will be expected to contribute. Less than 50 per cent. of working people pay into a pension scheme, and 80 per cent. of the schemes set up by companies are shells—nothing goes into them at all. If we do not address the issue of trust and the need for people to be sure that their money is safe, if we do not apply to Government advice the criteria that we apply to advice from a financial adviser, as both are covered by the same legislation, if we do not convince the public that their pension will be safe, if the Government do not accept the ombudsman’s report on maladministration, people such as my constituents, Mr. Peter Humphrey and the widow of David Cheshire, will demonstrate, and reports will appear in the press. They will not go away, as they will go on fighting for their rights, which will destroy the Government’s credibility and their efforts to sell personal accounts throughout the country.

The Government assume that many people will open a personal account, but the simplest way forward is to accept the ombudsman’s report on maladministration. I was working in a different capacity at the time, but I accept that my party made mistakes. The Government must accept that they, too, have made mistakes, so that confidence in pensions can be rebuilt.

If one talks to the younger generation—I am nearly 50, so I am getting on—it is clear that they are not investing in pensions. They are not putting money away for a rainy day. That is partly because, as we heard earlier, if they are on a low income, they have to put so much away in order to beat means-testing for benefits. That is a difficult situation, but the biggest problem is trust. No one trusts pensions enough to put their future into them. The Government could do so much for the Bill, which is an excellent Bill, if they accepted that they made a mistake, and compensated properly those whose pensions were stolen from them. Then we could start afresh and restore confidence in pensions. Hopefully, the Bill could regenerate the entire pensions industry.

8 pm

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