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Raising of the Pension Age

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) on securing this debate. I also congratulate him on a very well crafted speech, as well as giving him my best wishes for his retirement. Like the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason), I have visited the football ground in the constituency of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead. I must say that it was a particularly memorable day, not for the game of football—the score was Leyton Orient 0, Plymouth Argyle 0—but for the meeting afterwards of the Plymouth Argyle Supporters Association. The guest speaker was the late Michael Foot and it was a particular pleasure to see him then. Indeed, that Plymouth Argyle event was the last time that I saw the former leader of the Labour party alive. I must say that he gave the most exhilarating speech. I think that it was one of the best speeches that I have ever heard, although it was about Plymouth Argyle's 1928 FA cup run. There were certainly no interventions from the assembled supporters during that speech. I also wanted to congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead on making his case so robustly. Shall we say that he made it from a characteristically left-wing viewpoint? His stance was pretty much to ignore this country's gaping £175 billion deficit, as if it did not matter. Also, I noticed from his website, which I studied yesterday evening, that he has actually taken to praising the Prime Minister, which I am sure has not happened before, for his conversion to Keynesian policies. That says something about the leftwards lurch in the Labour party. Mr. Bayley, I welcome you to the Chair. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman slightly ruined parts of his speech by getting just a little too enthusiastic in talking about deep recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, casually ignoring the fact that the deepest recession of all since the 1930s has been, of course, the one that we are just coming out of, and that has taken place under the Government whom he professes to support. The hon. Gentleman also made some slightly bizarre comments. For example, he suggested that Lord Turner was trying to curry favour with the Conservative party. If that is the case, he does not seem to be doing it very successfully, given the fact that we are pledged to abolish his organisation, the Financial Services Authority. The hon. Gentleman raised several interesting points, with which I will deal in detail. One was the possible effect of any raise in the pension age on inequality, which I think that we would all agree has increased under the current Labour Government. However, I doubt whether his proposals would make much difference. I will discuss the meat of his arguments in due course. The hon. Member for Glasgow, East made some similar points and mentioned the important factor of differential life expectancies, with which I am familiar, as my constituency includes large estates ranking among this country's bottom 1 per cent. in terms of deprivation, literally next door to some of the country's wealthiest people. Differential life expectancies are an issue in my constituency. He was right to say that in debates such as this, the focus is inevitably on average life expectancy rather than the range of life expectancies. As was said in interventions on his speech, it would be difficult to design a pension system that took into account the range of life expectancies, but we would be interested to consider any proposals of his. He also made some valid observations about wealth inequality. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) made several interesting points. He kicked off by discussing the need for a long lead-in before any changes, citing the 15-year lead-in of the Pensions Act 1995. That is a valid point—we would all like as long a lead-in and warning as possible—but we must also consider what is affordable. Getting the balance right is the key question before us today. The hon. Member for Northavon made a number of points without setting out any policy of his own, as far as I could tell, about what the retirement age should be. He attacked the Conservative party's proposals, including asking whether we had taken legal advice. I am not aware of any Liberal Democrat policy that has come with legal advice attached. Perhaps he would like to attach legal advice to some of his proposed policies on this issue and others.