Clause 1 - Entitlement
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
That is a germane point, and I hope that the Minister will reflect on it and address it in his argument.
I wish the Minister to think a little more about what we have said about what the periods should be and why they should be that, bearing in mind that we are talking about regulations which will eventually, no doubt, fall to be considered here.
Beyond that—to make a point that begins to mesh into my second amendment—I wish to address the question of temporary absence. Why should these periods be set at all? I do not want to caricature the pension credit but, somewhere at the back of my mind, I am thinking about a problem of equity that might arise. A person might perfectly legitimately—and with no mis-statement of their income or circumstances—receive an assessment with regard to pension credit on day one that fixes their entitlement for five years, and that is, as it were, a one-way street, because it can be increased but it cannot be reduced. Shortly after that assessment they might, for example, receive a windfall, perhaps from the death of an elderly relative, which makes them very much richer, and they might continue to live in the United Kingdom, and to benefit from both the pension credit and from the windfall gain for five years, until reassessment. One can contrast that position with a situation where someone either finds that they have a reduction in income, and they may or may not apply, or they go outside the jurisdiction to another country, perhaps for very good reasons, such as family reunion, and after a qualifying period they are no longer entitled to the pension credit. There is
the potential for a tension in equity between those two cases.
I turn to how far the regulations run—and how far they might extend. Are they, for example, absolutely neutral between residents and people who have undertaken a longer than temporary removal to another country within the European Union, or to a British colony, such as the Falkland islands, or are the regulations intended to be absolutely neutral between all countries, for example the United States of America, or a Commonwealth country, or a country outside Europe that is not directly associated with the UK in any way?