Clause 1 - Entitlement
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)
I am sure that we will all take that fair injunction to heart. I associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry on what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Griffiths.
I should like to supplement the excellent points raised by my hon. Friend, who adverted to the sketches of the late Frankie Howerd. If I remember correctly, the narrator of the prologue was followed or interrupted by the soothsayer, who came on with tales of woe and doom. The Committee will be relieved to hear that I shall not assume that function this morning. To set the scene, we had an important debate about the crisis in funded pensions and the fact that more and more of our elderly people will rely on means-tested benefits rather than funded pensions. Our concerns on the subject are encompassed in the amendment.
I wish to make a simple plea about nomenclature, which is the subject of the group of amendments. I hope that, when we decide on the name attached to the payment, there will be a degree of continuity. I hope that the public can become accustomed to it, and that it will not change in a short time. That plea is encompassed in the amendments, particularly amendment No. 18, which mentions how the credit is to be publicised. It is the way of Governments—this Government are certainly not immune—to make changes to the names of payments and benefits, make a few marginal changes to them, and then launch them as entirely new propositions. The result, time and again, is that the public become thoroughly confused about such benefits. The Minister looks a bit disgruntled at that.