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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

My hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour is absolutely right. Phrases such as ““winter beds crisis”” and ““waiting on trolleys”” have gone out of the vocabulary. When did we last see anyone waiting on a trolley? That does not happen any more because people are looked after straight away. We are asked, ““Where’s the money gone?”” Pay has gone up. Nurses’ pay has gone up by 61 per cent. in 10 years, or 27 per cent. in real terms. The pay of support staff has gone up by 67 per cent., or 32 per cent. in real terms. That is welcome, but I need to say something to my Government: phasing this year’s pay rise is out of order. That is not what the nurses and health professionals of this country expect or deserve. The pay review award should be paid in full. Health workers deserve no less, and to pretend otherwise is an insult. Go back, please, and look at this again, or we could be facing real problems in the NHS. Where has the money gone locally? I am sorry, but I am going to bore hon. Members again. New facilities in Gateshead include the Bensham walk-in centre, which opened in 2004. A new medical practice in Teams opened in 2005, as did an out-of-hours service for people not registered with a dentist. New pharmacies have opened and a low-vision centre has been set up. Retinal screening for people with diabetes has been improved. There is a new condom distribution scheme and a health trainers project. We have a triage service in paediatric speech and language therapy—I could use it! New facilities in Blaydon include the new Whickham cottage medical centre and new GP practices, with two additional GPs. There are new facilities in Chopwell—the Pioneer centre—and new optometry practices in Crawcrook and Birtley. That is where the money has gone, but that is not all. The money has also gone on increasing staff numbers. We had 147 doctors in 2002, yet we had 161 in 2005. We had 135 GPs in 2002 and we have 146 today. There were 574 non-medical staff in 2002, but 793 in 2005. We had 74 qualified allied health professionals in 2002 and there were 102 in 2005—the list goes on. Hon. Members will not be surprised that while we had 29 managers and senior managers in 2002, we now have 55—that is the group that has seen the biggest growth. What are they doing? Let me move on to pensions. I have spoken to Age Concern and I addressed a conference of the National Pensioners Convention yesterday. Age Concern’s briefing said clearly:"““Significantly while Gordon Brown has been Chancellor the number of pensioners living in poverty has been reduced by almost 2 million””." Those are the words of Age Concern; they are not my words or those of the Labour party. It is good news that the point at which over-65s will start paying tax will increase and that no pensioner aged over 75 will pay tax on income under £10,000. It is also good news that the financial assistance scheme will be extended and that, at last, all the affected workers will access some help. I want to raise again the major challenges on pensions with my colleagues on the Front Bench. We must address the problem that 2.1 million people who are entitled to receive pension credit do not claim it. If people will not claim personally, we should go to them. As Lyons recommends, we should set up a one-stop shop with a single telephone line through which people could access pension credit. If the Government wish to argue that the basic state pension cannot be increased beyond its existing rate and that pension credit is the way out, we must make pension credit accessible. The Government are committed to restoring the earnings link in 2012, if the circumstances are right. We cannot wait until 2012. My Government should support Labour party and TUC policy and reintroduce the link before the end of this Parliament. We all know the history of the breaking of the link—it was done by the Conservative party for political purposes—but if we wait until 2012, 3 million of today’s pensioners will be history, and that would be unfair to them. Winter fuel payments have remained the same for the past two, three or four years. Since 2003, however, gas prices have gone up by 87 per cent. and electricity prises have risen by 56 per cent. We will miss our 2010 fuel poverty target if we do not address this problem. Earlier this year, Ofgem estimated that 4 million households will be in living in fuel poverty by the end of this winter. Just four years ago, the figure was only 2 million. We should look again at increasing the heating allowance by £100 for next winter. I want to talk about elderly people living in care. The period during which I worked for Newcastle city council as a care worker was one of the most rewarding times of my life. Some 280,000 people living in care homes receive a personal expenses allowance of £19.60 a week. That is absolutely pitiful, and we should support Age Concern’s campaign to raise that amount to £40 a week. All those proposals cost money, but it is money that would be spent on the most vulnerable in society. I urge the Government to work with the National Pensioners Convention, the TUC, Age Concern and the dedicated people who care for the elderly to try to put the matter right. I have listened all week to the Opposition parties crying out about a con trick, and I ask myself whether they listened during the Chancellor’s speech. Yesterday, I read an article by Anatole Kaletsky in The Times, which said:"““The con-trick criticisms are mostly spurious. The Chancellor was unusually straightforward in stating, at the very start of his speech, that this Budget would be broadly neutral, with no room for any net tax reductions. It was therefore perfectly clear that any tax cuts announced would be matched by increases elsewhere in the system. All the main tax increases…were presented straightforwardly and were clearly costed in the Treasury’s Budget documents.””" Those are not my words. He continued:"““The fact is that Mr Brown delivered exactly what most economists, tax experts and business lobbyists had long been demanding—a simplification of the tax system combined with an improvement in its efficiency, achieved by reducing marginal tax rates and simultaneously broadening the fiscal base.””"