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Pensioner Poverty

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Williams. It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen). We are all excited to hear that the Liberal Democrats are finalising their manifesto. I look forward to reading it, and picking out the undoubted huge contradictions. I pay tribute to the Select Committee, which has clearly worked hard in a spirit of great amity to produce two excellent volumes. The Committee's distinguished Chairman made an excellent speech with a tour d'horizon of many of the issues, and I apologise if I do not touch on every recommendation—if I did, we would be here for a very long time. I single out the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), who talked about women. With cross-party support, we have gone some way in recent legislation to tackle the historic outrage that less than one third of women receive a full state pension, but we are still left with some cliff edges and so on. However, I will not deal with that in great detail, but not because it is not important, The debate is taking place against a dark background for pensioners. We have heard that 2.6 million live in official poverty, and 11 per cent. live in persistent poverty. Several speakers touched on the take-up of benefits, and it is tragic that, according to the latest figures, some £5.4 billion of means-tested benefits that are rightfully the entitlement of older people are not claimed. That money is left in the Treasury and does not benefit pensioners. Some estimates are that if all that money were claimed, up to one third of pensioners would be lifted out of poverty. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) spoke about means-tested benefits and take-up, and I cannot improve on what she said. The overall answer is that, as Age Concern and Help the Aged said,""reductions in pensioner poverty have ground to a halt in recent years. It is shameful that, in one of the richest countries in the world, one in five pensioners continue to live in poverty."" That is a challenge not just for the current Government, but for a future Government. One problem is that the Government do not treat the matter sufficiently seriously. Ministers have a habit of claiming—I have a shrewd suspicion that the Minister here will be no exception—that they are curing the problem of poverty. I shall not take the line of the hon. Member for Rochdale, because I do not believe that a law to abolish poverty, any more than a law to abolish the deficit, is the way forward, because that is just a politician's response to a problem. I hope that he will not be too tearful when I say that I do not agree with what he said about introducing a Bill on pensioner poverty.