Schedule 2 - Minor and consequential amendments
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Professor Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
The amendment would answer a simple question: what is the position of pension credit recipients in residential and nursing homes with regard to the savings credit? We may have got the wrong bit of the wrong Act. The Government claim that the Bill will make savings pay, yet we have already thought of a number of instances—for example, for women aged 60 to 64—where savings will not pay. I received a written answer the other day, which stated that 200,000 recipients of pension credit will be living in residential care or nursing homes. I presume that that includes those people who are there on income support and getting all their fees paid. As I understand it, they will get what would colloquially be called pocket money, although that may be slightly
pejorative. They get an expenses allowance of about £15 a week.
I have raised that issue in the House. An issue of dignity is involved if people get £15 a week for pocket money in their declining years. As the pension credit comes along, should people who have saved and are now living in residential or nursing care have every penny of saving credit taken off them too, and just be left with the pocket money? Or should we simply say, as the amendment does, that those who have saved will receive a reward even if they are living in a residential or nursing home, because in addition to the pocket money they will get some savings credit? Two people in a residential home could both be getting the pocket money when one has saved and the other has not. If the Government want to reward savings, should not the credit apply just as much to people in residential accommodation?