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Raising of the Pension Age

I thank the Minister for that lengthy intervention. To correct her, our policy is to raise the pension age at some point after 2016. It is important to do that. In terms of some of the details of the implementation, we will have to wait and see. She can argue the issue during the coming general election campaign. The hon. Member for Northavon discussed the need for measured, steady progress, with which I think we would all agree, but he did not say towards what, in terms of a retirement age. He said that he departed somewhat in his conclusions from the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead. To be fair to the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead, his conclusion was absolutely clear, but the hon. Member for Northavon rather left the impression that he was still on the same vehicle, having failed to outline any idea of what he thought the retirement age should be. I urge the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead to correct his website, which says that""the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has said that he would save £13 billion a year by raising the retirement age for men and women to 66 by 2016."" Most parts of that sentence are untrue, as I have explained. In fact, his website is riddled with untruths about Conservative policies. He says that""900,000 children would miss out on Child Trust Funds which the Tories have said they will scrap."" That is utterly untrue. We have said that they will be restricted to poorer families, not scrapped. I would be grateful if he corrected that reference as well. This debate gives me the opportunity to set the record straight. In his article "Pension Justice" on the Poptel website and again today, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead discussed the widening gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor. We all agree that that is a concern, but maintaining the status quo on pensions will not do anything to address it. If we accepted his line of reasoning, the logical outcome would be different retirement ages for different professions or those from different socio-economic groups. I am not sure whether he would necessarily advocate that, but it certainly follows from what he and others have said. There is a blatant inconsistency in the hon. Gentleman's argument. If it is unfair in his terms to raise the retirement age for all when the rich live longer than the poor, how can it possibly be fair to maintain a lower retirement age for women when women live longer than men? I would be grateful if he explained that. If life expectancy is the touchstone of fairness, the hon. Gentleman ought to advocate a retirement age well in excess of 65 for women that is phased in as quickly as possible. That would take his argument to its logical conclusion. I do not think from his demeanour that he is in favour of doing so. Most people accept that differentiating state pensions according to life expectancy would be unfair and unworkable. On the same grounds, continuing to differentiate according to sex cannot be right in the longer term, particularly when life expectancy suggests the opposite case. That is a matter of common ground between the Opposition and the Government. To return to the matter in hand, it is the Labour Government who have destroyed pensions in this country, contrary to what is said on the hon. Gentleman's website. Labour's first welfare reform Minister, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), summarised Labour's record on pensions when he said on Radio 4 in September 2004 that""when Labour came to power we had one of the strongest pension provisions in Europe and now probably we have some of the weakest"." In my contribution to this debate, I will stick to a simple plan, outlining first the Labour Government's failures on pension provision and then the Conservatives' plans in the short and long term to do something about it. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of people in private sector pension schemes fell from 6.2 million in 1995 to 3.6 million in 2008. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead said, we had one of the strongest private pension systems in 1997, but not any more. The Prime Minister himself, as Chancellor, raided pension funds, taking £5 billion a year out of people's savings. Occupational pension schemes have closed down under the ever-increasing weight of regulation and bureaucracy, while Labour has allowed a pensions apartheid to grow up between the public and private sectors.