Clause 5
Pensions Bill
3:00 pm
James Plaskitt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions; Warwick and Leamington, Labour)
I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman recounting the history and to his efforts to explode the mythology that he says surrounds the previous Conservative Government’s decision to break that link in 1980. As I understand it, his argument turns on the issue of affordability. He refers to the state of public finances and to inflation, and he prays those in aid of the reasons why that Government decided to break the link. Is he sayingthat the link to earnings remains contingent on low inflation? If a future Conservative Government were to restore the link and then lose control of the economy, as they did before, and we returned to high inflation, is it likely that the link to earnings would be broken again?