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Benefits Uprating

May I also thank the Minister for his Department’s typical courtesy in releasing the statement to us well in advance? He is entitled to draw attention in his comments to those achievements that the Government have made in this area since 1997. However, may I gently suggest that there was quite a large measure of complacency in his statement, particularly set against what is going to be a far less benign environment over the next few years? Will he confirm that in the Chancellor’s Budget book yesterday, the Government’s projection for unemployment over the next year is that it will rise above 1 million and that their projection for public expenditure is that it will be growing, in current terms, at less than the growth rate of the economy over the period of the next spending review? Is that not going to make it significantly tougher to meet the Government’s targets on poverty across the board? We are dealing with an uprating statement, but there was no uprating of the winter heating allowance. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that and remind us when there was last an uprating of the winter heating allowance. Will he confirm that energy prices have risen by something like 50 per cent. over the last four years? Will he also confirm that, although his Government have a commitment to eliminate fuel poverty by 2010, the Department of Trade and Industry is now projecting that fuel poverty will double from 1 million households to 2 million households between 2004 and 2006. In the light of that, is it not surprising that the Government are not doing more on the winter heating allowance? The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) is still clearly quite sore about the fact that his party did not vote against the disgraceful rise of 75p in the basic state pension a couple of years ago. We make no apology at all for voting against that. Does not the lack of progress on the winter heating payment reinforce the case for re-linking and for bringing forward the restoration of the link between the basic state pension and earnings? Is the Minister embarrassed that he is still not in a position to tell the House whether the earnings link will be restored by 2012? Will he confirm that we may have to wait until 2015? The Minister pointed out that much of what the Government have done for pensioners has been on means-tested benefits. He gave the impression that the take-up of means-tested benefits is improving, but will he confirm that up to 1.6 million pensioners are not receiving the pension credit and that about 2.2 million pensioners are not receiving council tax benefit? When about 45 per cent. of all the pensioners entitled to council tax benefit are not actually getting it, how can the Minister tell us that take-up is improving or even at a satisfactory level? Surely that reinforces the case for a higher basic state pension, which would take more people out of means-testing and give personal accounts a chance to work. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to simplify the benefits system, as means-testing is only one aspect of the complexity? Will he confirm that there are now 51 different benefits and 250 different rates—something like double the number of 30 years ago? Is that not a major challenge for many claimants? Will he confirm that the Government have made grossly inadequate progress on reducing the number of people on incapacity benefit since 1997? Will he also confirm that the rolling out of the pathways project to all who want to take advantage of it is to be halted because of cuts in his Department’s administration budget, which could have very serious consequences? Is he not worried that the Government seem to have a lot of money to spend on keeping people in dependency, but not much to help those who want to work to get back into employment? Finally, may I raise the issue of whether we need a more fundamental review of the levels of many benefits that are not linked to earnings. The Minister will be aware that, since 1979, jobseeker’s allowance and its equivalents, for example, have shrunk from about 23 per cent. of average earnings to little more than 10 per cent. now. If the Government want to continue to reduce poverty, will they not therefore at some stage have to review the benefits that are not simply in the priority area of child poverty? Will he consider not only trying to simplify the benefits system, but bringing some of the other benefits that have fallen so far behind up to a level that will stand a chance of keeping people out of relative poverty?