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Caring for the Elderly

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In fairness, he assiduously attends these debates on pensions issues. I might have a slightly lived-in look, but I certainly was not a Member of this House in the early 1980s. We could go into the prehistory of 1980 and the decision to break the link at that point—again, curiously, as history repeats itself, the then Government had inherited a disastrous financial situation from a previous Labour Government, but we will not go down that route—but this Government have had 12 long years to restore the link and they have done nothing about it. Perhaps the most unfairly treated of all are those pensioners to whom I referred a moment ago, who did the right thing all their lives. They saved while they were working so that they could supplement their pension when they retired. About three quarters of pensioner households receive income from savings and investment, and in recent times they have seen those savings rendered almost worthless. The interest that they receive, thanks to the economic mess that this Government have caused, is pitiful or even non-existent. To make matters worse, the Treasury assumes that they are getting 10 per cent. on those savings when it comes to calculating entitlement to benefits. Will the Minister now undertake to review the tariff income rule that causes such blatant unfairness? In this year's Budget, we called on the Government to increase age-related personal allowances for those aged 65 or above by £2,000, which would have benefited them by up to £400 a year. We pressed Ministers to scrap income tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers. Instead, the Government increased taxes on pensions. Ministers have even refused our proposal that the compulsory annuitisation rules be temporarily suspended during the financial turmoil. As a result, many people who prudently saved for their retirement have been forced to fix their income for the rest of their lives at the worst possible moment. We Conservatives believe that Governments should encourage saving, not penalise it. We would introduce measures that would help everyone, but particularly older people, such as the two-year council tax freeze, which is worth more than £200 to the typical family, and energy-efficiency improvements for every household, saving energy and reducing bills.