Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Social Security – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 April 1996.
Peter Lilley
Secretary of State for Social Security
12:00,
23 April 1996
The hon. Gentleman may find it difficult to distinguish between the future and the past, but most of us do not. He is quite right that if we equalised the state pension age at 60, which is effectively what the Labour Front-Bench team proposes, instead of 65, which is what we propose, the difference in cost would be £13 billion a year. If he wants up-to-date figures, I should tell him that the other extraordinary mistake made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East was to say that 25 per cent. of 17-year-olds staying on at school were in private education. He said:
child support is a subsidy for the school fees of the wealthy rather than an incentive to assist the education of the very poor.
That is nonsense. If child benefit were taken away from school leavers, there would be every likelihood that the proportion of less well-off children staying on at school would be greatly enhanced. Will the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) repudiate the bogus figures given by his hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East?