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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

I accept that, and I shall make most of my remarks in the context of what is happening in the wider global economy. It might not surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that I take a quite different view of the fragility of the global economy. When hon. Members say that we have to strip this country bare to try to compete with China and India, I ask them to begin from a different audit position. If we look at those two countries and the dilemmas that they are currently grappling with, we see that they begin with quite different questions. They are already asking themselves where on earth they will find the water resources to sustain their current levels of production or the domestic requirements of their citizens. They are asking where they can find the energy resources needed to continue to underpin those levels of production. All the major growth areas in the developing world are already in deep environmental crisis in respect of access to those sustainable resources. In the coming decade we shall have to take a quite different view of what holds the global economy together, and the way in which we approach global ecology will determine that. The one more conventional point that I must make before I launch into the specifics of my green Budget is to recognise today’s lobby of Parliament by some extremely cold pensioners who were stripped of their pensions—125,000 of them—and who continue to make the point that a massive injustice has been inflicted on them by denying their rights to full restoration of their stolen pensions. Although I was grateful for the Chancellor’s reference to the strengthening of the financial assistance scheme, the reality is that when it comes down to the core figures of what it would take for this House, this Government, this Parliament to restore those pensions in full, we are not talking about £15 billion, which was the figure originally quoted. We are talking about a current sum of only £45 million a year between now and 2011. Between 2011 and 2020, the worst-case scenario is that that would rise to £100 million a year. To put that in the context of the existing Department for Work and Pensions budget, just the error factor in last year’s administration of pension credit came to £120 million a year. I do not believe that we should wait for a further court judgment in favour of the pensioners and against the Government’s claim that it is not their fault and they are not in a position to do anything about it. The honest, decent and principled legal duty is to restore those pensions in full—and it would be bought for a sliver of the costs from the Exchequer cake that the Chancellor took us through today.