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The Economy and Welfare Reform

I have had no difficulty whatsoever listening to the hon. Member for Worsley (Ms Keeley). She paid a very graceful tribute to her predecessor, and she will be a worthy voice for the people of Lancashire. She spoke with knowledge and a great deal of sincerity about the various issues facing her constituency, and I hope that we hear a good deal more from her very soon. We have also heard the very competent and confident maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who described the real threat of over-development in her constituency. Over-development is also a threat in my constituency and many others. She also spoke warmly about all sorts of different issues facing Mid-Bedfordshire, including education and family matters. We are very lucky to have these two new Members to help us with our debates, and I suspect that some of us older Members will need to look to our laurels if we are to speak as well as they do. I should like to add one final tribute. We are lucky to have in the Chamber the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), a man of huge authority and distinction. He has given great service to the country, not least to Northern Ireland, and the points that he made were very valuable. I should like to speak briefly about pensions, the most important issue facing this country at the moment. We need not only to encourage people to set aside money for their old age, but to ensure that our older people live in dignity and with the kind of worthwhile lifestyle that is now under threat. We all know the background: our pensions are in crisis. People are living longer and saving less: this represents a demographic time bomb, and I am afraid that the Government’s £500 million-a-year raid on pension funds did not help. There have also been uncertainties in the stock market, and I have to say that the mis-selling of pensions in the 1990s did not help either. The Conservative Government did their utmost to sort that out, however, and I think that we were successful. I do not believe that the Government’s heavy reliance on means-testing is the answer. The pension credit route down which the Government are going will make matters worse, as Adair Turner said at the weekend. We need to encourage older people to stay in the work force, and to enable them to get back into it if they lose their job. Adair Turner said at the weekend that graduates might well have to work until they are 70. On Monday, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said that they would not. We need some kind of policy on this, and I hope that the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will work on that. Why does pensions policy always need to be sorted out? Why has it not already been sorted out? Working longer must be part of the answer to the pensions crisis that we face. In 2002, there were 20 million people over the age of 50. By 2031, there are likely to be 27 million such people. There will therefore be more people on pensions and fewer people in the work force to support them. The worry is also that those people in the work force could lose their jobs—we have recently had the crises at Rover, Marconi and Colgate. People who lose their job when they are in their 40s and 50s are usually not prepared for it; it comes as a dreadful shock to them. They also find it harder to re-enter the work force, and they know that there is a real possibility that they will be discriminated against by employers. Ninety per cent. of older people believe that they will face discrimination in the work force, and in 2002, a MORI poll showed that ageism was the most common form of discrimination that we face.