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Finance Bill

Of course it includes pension credit. The hon. Lady will intervene on me if I have misunderstood her, but I think that she is trying to say that one third of those who would be eligible for pension credit do not claim. Again, she has given a sloppy statistic, because a lot more than one third of pensioners do not claim pension credit—it would be a waste of time for millionaire pensioners to claim pension credit. To put the current pensions situation in context, we also need to consider the national health service. It is estimated, although such estimates are difficult, that two thirds of spending on the national health service goes—understandably and properly, because it is a great thing—on pensioners. Generally, as people get older, they tend to have poorer health. In the first 11 years of the Labour Government—we know the figures for the coming year—NHS spending has increased from about £30 billion to £90 billion a year. That is a £60 billion increase. Two thirds of that increase would come to £40 billion per year, for about 12 million pensioners. I am not very good at doing mental arithmetic on statistics, but that comes to about £3,500 per pensioner per year. The working generation are putting forward, quite properly, an average of £70 a week—I defend that stoutly—in support of pensioners.