New Clause 2
Pensions Bill
4:00 pm
Nigel Waterson (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Eastbourne, Conservative)
There is a philosophical difference. As my hon. Friend invites me on to that territory, let me deal with it. I believe that the Chancellor, who is about to be Prime Minister, actually likes people being dependent on the state in all sorts of ways, whether employed directly by it or dependent on it to earn a decent living through means-tested benefits and so on. As Conservatives, we take a different view. We believe that the more people are dependent on handouts from the state, the less likely some of them are even to claim them in the first place, and the more demoralising it is for people who do claim them. That is another extremely good reason for wanting not just to stop the increase in means-testing but to reverse it.
One of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) raised on Second Reading was how we start rolling back means-testing in a clear-cut manner. One way was to gain consensus on an aspiration to do so, which means that, as and when funding is available, whoever is in Government will boost the state pension above and beyond what is in the current package.