Clause 7 - Power to provide for payments
Age-Related Payments Bill
11:15 am
Professor Steve Webb (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
I suspect that we will return to this subject at greater length this afternoon. The question is whether we need the power in clause 7. The hon. Member for Eastbourne is right to describe the Bill as emergency legislation. He referred to a written answer that I received on the purposes of the clause which referred to the making of ad hoc payments. It really has come to something if, when things go wrong, Britain's pensioners have to depend on ad hoc payments to ensure a decent standard of living. That seems an admission of defeat. One would have thought that we already had a mechanism for making payments to people over 60: it is called the pension. I grant that men aged 60 to 64 do not get it, but pretty much everyone else over 60 does.
As we are all concerned about the living standard and welfare of pensioners, we should not deal with such issues in a Bill that is trying to do something else, and through an ad hoc clause that says, ''We don't really want the trouble of having to go through all this again, so we'll put in a sort of reserved power.'' A far better strategy would be to ensure that the pension is good enough in the first place. That way, as I put it on Second Reading, pensioners would not have to wait every year for that final moment of the Chancellor's Budget speech in which he suddenly produces the rabbit from the hat. None of us would want our living standards to depend on that. Instead of the ad hoc payments, there should be a decent system of support for older people.
It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.