Clause 5
Pensions Bill
1:30 pm
Nigel Waterson (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Eastbourne, Conservative)
I think he meant long gravel drives.
That may not be the read-across. As the hon. Member for Northampton, North said, we must also work on the basis that some people move abroad for pressing family or even health reasons and others perhaps escape to southern Spain because they will save on their fuel bills, although I understand that they will still get their winter fuel allowance, which must come in handy. Likewise, there will be people in that kind of grouping who go to places like Canada or Australia. They are not getting an uprated British state pension and will therefore be subject, presumably, to the relevant means-testing of benefits in those countries, be they the equivalent of pension credit or whatever.
There are some savings to be netted off. The Treasury is already saving money on the latter group, because not only is it not paying them their uprated basic state pension, but it is not paying them the means-tested benefits that they would certainly be claiming if they were still in this country. I am open to correction by the Minister, but my understanding is that pension credit, for example, is not payable to a UK pensioner living overseas. Equally, there must be Australians and Canadians, for example, living here, in straitened circumstances, with no uprated pension, who are claiming means-tested benefits at the moment.
That £400 million is a suspiciously constant figure—I have a vague recollection of that being bandied around by Conservative Ministers when the same issue was raised in correspondence quite a few years ago. However, it would be nice to know whether that figure was net or gross and whether it takes into account any of the factors that I have mentioned. It would certainly be helpful in our Conservative policy review to know exactly what sum we are talking about, so that we can look at it realistically.