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Pensions Bill

It is an adage that if you sit here long enough, you will get your time. I am about to get more time than the Front-Bench spokespeople, which is fantastic news. As I mentioned, I came in for Prayers this morning. I have sat here throughout not only because this is a very important debate, but because the financial assistance scheme was not covered on Report and so I could not talk about it much then—I now have ample opportunity to do so. I have made many speeches in this House before this Secretary of State and Minister of State—the Minister for Pensions Reform—as well as before previous Ministers of State, calling for justice for the 125,000 pensioners whose pensions were stolen from them when their occupational schemes were wound up. I shall repeat again that more than 700 such people come from my constituency. I was ever so pleased when, after five years of campaigning by many hon. Members across this House, we thought we had reached the conclusion and we thought that those people would receive their compensation. We all fought for 90 per cent., and that is what they will get through the financial assistance scheme. I told my pensioners at our public meeting in my constituency on the Saturday when many members of the team who have been working with the Government Front-Bench team on the issue were present—people such as Peter and Jacquie Humphrey, Dave Allen and Ros Altmann—that we must examine the small print. I am worried not by the Front-Bench team who are present, but by their paymasters in the Treasury, who have always worried me and who have frankly been holding this back for many years. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has promised to write to me about the two points I raised in my intervention. Perhaps he would be kind enough to write to me about a couple of others, too. The first relates to pensioners who should have been getting their pension but who had to receive benefits because the FAS has not paid out. Will the Government guarantee—will the Secretary of State guarantee this to me in writing, if necessary—that benefits paid to pensioners in schemes while they have been waiting will not be claimed back? It seems obvious that they would not be, but successive Governments have often claimed back moneys paid in benefits when people have received compensation. That often happens in respect of injury compensation where people have been on income support. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Members on the Government Front Bench are not willing to listen to a debate in which some of us have participated for seven hours, but if they could bear with us for a few more minutes, they would then be able to go off to the bar and have a laugh. This is a serious matter. Many people are worried about whether they will have to pay back the benefits. There is a track record of that happening, and I seek assurances from the Government that that will not happen to these pensioners. The other issue—I am grateful that the Secretary of State agreed to meet with me about it—is the situation of those who have lost their loved ones while waiting for the compensation to come through. My constituent Dave Cheshire died about two and half years ago and his widow, Marlene Cheshire, does not know what will happen. If the claimants had still been alive, they would receive the full compensation package, but their widows may be in a difficult situation. When the Secretary of State was the Minister of State, he met a delegation of widows from all over the country and he promised to look at the situation then, but it is still a big issue now and of grave concern. The other, linked issue is that of claimants who have lost their income while they have been waiting for compensation because they have been unable to work due to sickness. I wrote to the Secretary of State about that recently, because some of my constituents are worried about how much money they will get from the scheme. They want to know whether they can enter the scheme early because they are disabled. It is a technical point, but it is important. If they are not available for work because they are disabled, can they enter the scheme early or do they have to wait for the full version? I apologise for bringing those points up at such a late stage, but they are vitally important for the pensioners who are likely to get money from the FAS. They need to know the details so that they can plan their future. All of the great work that has been done on the Bill and the consensus that the Government have reached with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is important, but it will be a waste of time unless the public have trust in pensions. The Secretary of State mentioned 12 million people who could join the scheme, but they will not go anywhere near it if they do not have any trust in it. I have been canvassing in the London elections and it is an issue on the doorstep. People are concerned about their futures and whether they can trust anybody with their pension schemes, especially with the banks and the current credit squeeze. Many people who lost trust in traditional pension schemes, especially when the occupational schemes started to be wound up, looked to investment in property. A crisis is happening there, alongside the crisis of confidence in the pension scheme. In the eloquent words of Ros Altmann, who was a Government adviser before she helped the occupational pension scheme groups, we have a pension crisis today that could well become a pensioner crisis tomorrow, unless we address the issue of confidence in the pension system. It is up to the Government to be the driving force. They have been the driving force on this issue, but—as Conservative Front Benchers have said today—we have heard it all before from both Labour and Conservative Governments. They have claimed that whatever they are proposing is the panacea to the pension problem and will mean that more people will have a decent pension. However, even if this scheme works, we will not solve the problem unless we address the issue of means testing. Earlier on, we heard of the millions of people whom the actuaries assumed would not take up the means-tested benefits. The Minister of State said that he had written numerous times to those who had been pinpointed as the sort of people who should be getting pension credit. After writing a third or fourth time, the Government should take the hint: those people will never apply for pension credit. They see it as a handout and as taboo, and they would be ashamed to claim it. There is no other reason why they should fail to claim it, if the Government have written to them—[Interruption.] Ministers are googling away on the Government Front Bench, but if they had listened to the debate they would have heard about the thousands of pensioners who do not take up the pension credit because they see it as a stigma to do so. It is not because of the complicated forms; that is a certain area. It is not because they have not been informed enough; that is a certain area. There are whole areas of this country where pensioners will not take up the credit because they feel that they are going cap in hand. We should have a link to earnings, which should come forward now. If that happened, a lot more people would not be on means-tested benefit, and the savings would be coming across. All through the debate, from both sides of the House, including the Secretary of State's Back Benchers—