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Occupational Pensions

Had the hon. Gentleman been present in the House during the earlier part of the debate, he would know that we have gone through that. As he well knows, Conservative party policy will be very clear at the next general election. The fact remains that the 1997 decision was made on the basis that it would help investment, but the evidence that emerged in the following 10 years shows that it simply did not do so. The purpose was to raise revenue, which, as I have said, is the purpose of taxation, but that was not how it was presented. That is the charge that we have made against the Chancellor. What the Chancellor did in 1997 is something that he has done many times since—he raised taxes, but he did not say, ““Look, I’m raising revenue. These are the downsides, but I want the extra money to spend on public services.? In that case, he said, ““It is all for the purpose of improving investment?, which was palpably false. In the pre-Budget report, he claimed that he is helping the environment by doubling the rate of air passenger duty, when the truth is that that was for the purpose of raising revenue. It has been the style of the Chancellor throughout not to be open and transparent about his policies, but to try to conceal tax-raising policies by claiming that they are some kind of technicality. I shall quote an article by Evan Davies, the BBC economics correspondent, in an article on his website, which was not entirely critical by any means of the Chancellor—indeed, there were a number of complaints in the comments section about its being far too sympathetic. It states:"““anyone listening to his account of the tax change…might have been forgiven for thinking it was simply designed to remove some technical distortions prevailing in the tax system. They knew it was more than that.?" The charge against the Chancellor is that he was not clear and straight with the British people, which is important for two reasons. First, it does nothing for the credibility of politicians as a whole when we are not open and clear with the electorate. Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) has said, had it been clear that greater demands were being made upon pension funds, and had people realised that would be expected of them in their personal contributions, then maybe people would have adjusted their behaviour, but they did not do so, which is partly the fault of the Chancellor for not making the situation clear. The Chancellor does not tend to be terribly straightforward, and as a member of the Treasury Committee I have witnessed that on more than one occasion involving not only taxes but spending—sometimes there is double counting, and sometimes the figures from several years are rolled up to come up with one grand total. In this year’s Budget—this is directly relevant to the debate about occupational pensions—we saw another technique with regard to the financial assistance scheme. The Chancellor made great play of the fact that he has increased the amount from £2 billion to £8 billion but, as Treasury officials confirmed to the Treasury Committee, if one looks at it on a net present value basis, as every actuary would, the figure is much lower—£1.9 billion. There was no extra money. There are no extra sums for it in the Department for Work and Pensions budget; it comes out of the existing budget over a 60-year period. That is important because the financial assistance scheme is supposed, but is failing, to help many of our constituents who have been left without their occupational pensions. The extent to which that is directly linked to tax credits and other factors makes it a complex matter. None the less, the parliamentary ombudsman has found that there was maladministration because of the publicity material that was provided. It has left people in great difficulties, including many of my constituents who formerly worked for Dexion.