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Caring for the Elderly

I beg to move,"That this House believes all old people should be treated with dignity and respect; regrets that 2.5 million pensioners are living in poverty; notes the Government's failure to state when it intends to restore the link between the uprating of the state pension and the growth in average earnings; regrets the sharp decline of defined benefit schemes during this Government's stewardship; further regrets that the Government failed to adopt proposals for fully-funded measures to help savers in this year's Budget; notes that some 45,000 people are forced to sell their homes each year to pay for long-term care; regrets the lack of costed options and proposals in the Government's Green Paper for the future funding of long-term care; recognises the pressures on the health and social care systems due to demographic factors and the debt crisis; notes that, despite claims to the contrary, no party has plans to cut support for pensioners such as free bus passes, free TV licences for over 75s or winter fuel allowance; supports active and independent ageing; pays tribute to all those with caring responsibilities across the public, third and private sectors, in particular the 6 million voluntary carers in the UK; and calls on the Government to introduce more effective policies to encourage respect for older citizens and to promote security and dignity in old age." Prior to their election in 1997, the Government made three hugely important promises to our older citizens. First, the current Prime Minister said:""I want the next Labour government to achieve what in 50 years of the welfare state has never been achieved—the end of the means test for our elderly people."" Labour also promised in its 1997 manifesto that""all pensioners should share fairly in the increasing prosperity of the nation."" At the 1997 Labour party conference, Tony Blair said:""I don't want them"—" children—""brought up in a country where the only way pensioners can get long-term care is by selling their home."" On all those promises, Labour has comprehensively failed to deliver for older people. Means-testing now affects nearly half of all pensioners. Some £5 billion a year in benefits goes unclaimed by pensioners. As for increased prosperity, there are now some 2.5 million pensioners living in poverty. Even before the economic downturn began to bite, research for Age Concern and Help the Aged showed that 60 per cent. of low-income pensioners were struggling to get by and were finding it hard to manage, two thirds were cutting back on gas and electricity, more than half were buying less or poorer quality food, and one in 12 pensioners said that they had built up debt as a result of increases in the cost of living. As for long-term care, some 45,000 people a year are still being forced to sell their homes to pay for care costs. Not much of a record, is it? What are Ministers doing, as this Government head for the buffers? They publish more discussion documents. In the last few days alone, they have produced two such documents. What do they have in common? Is it the fact that they serve only to underline this Government's record of inaction and failure when it comes to the needs and concerns of older people? First we had "Building a society for all ages". After 12 years, it appears that Ministers have finally woken up to the challenges of an ageing society. Of course, we can agree that increased longevity is phenomenal. If my speech were to last an hour, Madam Deputy Speaker—I promise you that it will not, although it may seem like it—your life expectancy on average would increase by about 12 minutes during that hour. Indeed, in the foreword to that document, the Prime Minister is good enough to refer to my erstwhile constituent Henry Allingham, who at 113 is now the oldest man—but not the oldest person—in the world. The best Labour can offer us is a "grandparents summit" in the autumn and an earlier review of the default retirement age, plus a ragbag of existing initiatives, empty self-congratulation and some vague aspirations for the future. There are to be refresher courses for older drivers. It is all jam tomorrow while hard-pressed pensioners bear the brunt of the recession. The document promises to bring forward to next year the review of the default retirement age. It rightly points out that more than 1 million people are already working beyond state pension age—mainly, I suspect, through harsh economic necessity. It sets out the financial and social benefits of working longer, but for many people, continuing to work may be the only way of repairing their finances for retirement. Indeed we have already legislated to raise the state pension age to 68. But the Opposition have been saying for several years that retirement should be less an event and more a process. Flexibility is what older workers need. However, the document is bizarrely free of any opinion from Ministers as to whether they support a default retirement age. This is the very point to be decided by a High Court judge very soon. Perhaps in her response the Minister for Pensions and the Ageing Society could give us some clue about the Government's thinking on the subject, or even just tell us what she thinks. The Government also make much of the Equality Bill as a vehicle to tackle age discrimination, yet although that Bill includes wide powers to bring in exemptions relating to older people, the detail of the exemptions is not yet available. The document is also guilty of spin when it deals with pensioner poverty. It asserts:""For the first time pensioners are now less likely than others to be in poverty."" That is also a favourite mantra for Ministers, but it is based on statistics after housing costs. If we take the figures before housing costs, the story is very different.