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Finance (No. 3) Bill

I shall not press amendment 30 to a Division tonight, because we will return to the subject in greater detail later in the Parliament. However, I want to address some questions to those on the Treasury Bench. I accept that there are problems with the amendment, but it was the only way that I could find to debate the matter in the House. I wish to remind the Minister that in the Budget debate of 2010, the Chancellor said that"““the Government are asking the public sector to accept a two-year pay freeze, but we will protect the lowest paid…They will each receive a flat pay rise worth £250””—[Official Report, 22 June 2006; Vol. 512, c. 171.]" He said that the cut-off point would be not £18,000 but £21,000 a year, and he, not the Opposition, estimated that 1.7 million people would receive that pay increase. A number of Opposition Members, including those who put their names to amendment 30, and many hon. Members, have constituents who believed what the Government said. They believed that they would be protected. The Chancellor's announcement was a crucial part of protecting those workers, but it was also a crucial part of selling to the wider public the pay freeze that the Government announced. However, those people have so far received no £250 pay increase. I should therefore like to ask the Minister two questions. First, of the 1.7 million who not I, but the Chancellor, said would be eligible, how many have received the £250 across-the-board pay increase? Next year's earnings figures show that the numbers eligible will rise to 2.2 million. Therefore, my second question for those on the Treasury Bench is this: how many of that 2.2 million will receive their £250 pay increase? I conclude by merely trying to express, perhaps inadequately, a sense of how low-paid workers in my constituency feel. They feel that they have again been let down. The previous Labour Government did not do too well by that group, with the 10p tax rate abolition, and this Government have done not too well by them. Many are women coming up to retirement age who now learn that they must work two years more. They thought they would get £250 as a lump sum to protect them against rising prices and a general wage freeze, but many now find that no such increase is forthcoming. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could give us answers to those two questions.