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Pensioner Poverty

I am delighted to take part in this debate on the excellent treatise from the Work and Pensions Committee. I apologise that I have to leave earlier than I had anticipated, because I wish to speak in the debate in the main Chamber, but I will make some brief comments. I will start with two points of congratulation. One of them is addressed in part to the Department for Work and Pensions and in part to the Treasury. We would have many more pensioners living in poverty had the Government not bitten the bullet and introduced the financial assistance scheme and, latterly, the Pension Protection Fund. We had our arguments when that went through Parliament, but the scheme's benefit is shown when we talk to people who are now receiving moneys after funds to which they had contributed over their whole lives went into administration through no fault of their own. The sums are not necessarily as high as some of us would like, as we believe that they should be fully compensated, but as far as I can tell they are receiving money automatically—I do not like the word "automaticity". That particularly vulnerable group would have every reason to feel let down, principally by their employers, secondly by their trust fund administrator, and thirdly by the Government, potentially, had we not done something about it. That is something the Government ought to be proud of, because it is good news that it seems to be working, and that pride ought to be shared between the DWP and the Treasury, as they overlap on that. My second point of congratulation, which I have mentioned on other occasions, is for the DWP directly, and I only wish that it would say more about it and take some congratulations. It is about the village agent scheme, which was pioneered in Gloucestershire. The DWP employed people in village areas to go out and proselytise—the aim being to find out whether people were fully taking all that they were entitled to in pension credit and various benefits. Despite criticism in the early days from some people in the localities who thought that those involved were interfering busy bodies, the scheme, which has now been taken on by Gloucestershire county council, because sadly the funding ended, has been an unalloyed success. I hear nothing but good about what has happened as a result of the scheme. People who had no reason to believe that they were entitled to claim now do so just because someone came round, sat down with them and helped them fill in the forms, asking, "Are you sure you are not entitled to carers allowance?" For the first time they are receiving benefits that make a great deal of difference. I say to the DWP that when it gets it right it ought to be out there shouting it from the rooftops. There is the argument about the £5 billion that is not claimed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned. That is why we are going out to try to get people to claim and going the extra mile in rural areas, because the people there are too old or incapacitated to ever go to a citizens advice bureau. Where we have done it, and done it right, let us say so. It might be a relatively small number of people, but they are eternally grateful—I know because I have met them. They are also shocked because they had not realised how poorly off they were. That is often the way—they often do not claim because they do not see themselves as particularly poor, even though they are struggling from day to day. My third point is not one of congratulation, but of realism. We need to look far closer at the relationship between pensioner poverty and the low quality of life of many of our older residents, particularly in rural areas. The evidence, if Stroud is anything to go by, is that the oldest residents live in the oldest property and, sadly, face the most immense problems with heating and just with the daily grind of getting to the shops and so on. As much as that is to do with quality of life, rather than something we would necessarily term poverty, it is really about what many of our older people face day in, day out.