Clause 3
Welfare Reform Bill
9:10 am
Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)
Good morning, Mr. Hood. I need not detain the Committee long on this issue, but I just want to pause on one aspect on which I have not tabled an amendment. In a sense, it follows on from the exchanges that we have just had about the definition of what are and what are not pension payments. You would certainly not thank me for extending the debate to cover wider issues, such as the set-off of pension payments and entitlements that former employees may receive before they reach retirement age and whether those should be partially stopped for incapacity benefit. On the other hand, as our earlier exchange indicated, there are concerns about what constitutes a pension payment.
Again, I do not need to give the Committee an elegant essay on the changing definitions. I happen to be an avid listener to Classic FM when I am in the car and it has a number of advertisements that talk about annuities. Clearly that word has modified from its 16th century origins as annual payments to repay money that had been lent to the king. [Interruption.]