---

(Clauses 1, 4, 8, 189 and 209, Schedules 1, 23 and 33, and new Clauses and new Schedules relating to value added tax)

I will try to keep my remarks short. I have listened to today's debate with great interest. First and foremost, it is important that we take proper account of the long-term erosion of pensioners' incomes over the past three decades, since the link between earnings and the state pension was broken, and of the more recent pressures in the wake of the financial crisis. The changes to age-related allowances that we are discussing will not affect the poorest pensioners or those who are comfortably off. They will, however, affect the 40% of pensioners who have modest incomes. Those people have saved for their retirement, and 4.4 million older people will be worse off as a result of the changes.