Clause 5
Pensions Bill
11:00 am
James Purnell (Minister of State (Pensions Reform), Department for Work and Pensions; Stalybridge and Hyde, Labour)
The key point has always been, how could one have a plan that would allow a Government to legislate on this? The hon. Member for Eastbourne tried to say that the link between the basic increase in state pension and the rise in the state pension age was only something that had arrived recently. That is the opposite of the truth. One has always had to answer the question of how one would fund the provision for the long term. One can do so through the Bill because those very two things come together in it, exactly as the Pensions Commission recommended. So, this Bill moves from a situation where pensioners have, in practice, been sharing the growing prosperity of the nation to one where we can legislate for that. We can only do that thanks to the difficult choice in this Bill on the rise in the state pension age.