Clause 4 - Exclusions
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
It would concern me even more if the hon. Member for Dagenham still believed in it, because his leader does not. If we continued along these lines I think that you, Mr. Griffiths, would feel that we were being tempted. I intended merely to make the jocular remark that whenever I see a clause 4, I feel the urge to amend it.
I have no major conceptual problem with this clause. I am not about to suggest that the red hordes are going to march down Whitehall, or anything like that—indeed, perish the thought, with the present
Government. However, we can, perhaps, leave that topic to another day.
I wish to raise two serious issues that will arise with regard to different amendments. Such issues sometimes arise when one is addressing apparently simple and technical clauses, such as this one. I sometimes think about such matters in the small hours of the night. I hope that Committee members will not think that I spend all of the small hours reflecting on the State Pension Credit Bill, but occasionally one wakes up—after a nightmare, for example—and thinks about something that one had not thought about before.
As I have said, there are a couple of serious issues, particularly with regard to this amendment, that deserve a little bit of the Committee's time. The concept of the clause is not silly. Its primary aim is to prevent the payment of more than one pension credit to a benefit unit. I do not think that we will argue about that at all; it is clear that that will happen.
However, I should perhaps add that there is a wider issue here, which I have been concerned about. Following the advances that were made by the previous Conservative Government in the sphere of independent taxation—although I know that the Minister of State does not always feel that advances have ever been made by any of his political opponents—this measure begins to row us back towards a world in which people are seen and treated as one unit for the purpose of their income, bearing in mind that this is an income-related benefit. I record that but I will not necessarily debate it further, as that is the decision that the Government have made.
With regard to the purpose of amendment No. 27, two things need to be discussed. First, what is a couple? That came in for some comments from Help the Aged. I assume that a couple are usually—but, perhaps, not exclusively—two people of different sexes who are either married or cohabiting, and are therefore treated as a single benefit unit—to use the term of art—and that those would be the people who would be entitled to a single pension credit. However, Help the Aged makes a rather terse comment in relation to clause 2, which also applies here:
''Married/unmarried couples is always good for domestic tension. Will (say) two older sisters living in one household be two singles or one couple?''
My understanding is that they will be two singles, but it is important that the Minister of State should explain that.