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

One key point is missing from this debate, and that is a memory on the part of the Labour party. We have heard a lot of cant from the Opposition and they have shown very little memory of the pensions raid back in 1997, which knocks the issue of age-related allowances into a cocked hat. It should be remembered that there was a £150 billion pension stealth tax at that time. Indeed, Ros Altmann, who was an adviser to Tony Blair, famously said that Labour ““destroyed our pensions system””. The numbers involved as regards age-related allowances are small compared with that massive and unjustified smash-and-grab raid on our pension system, which destroyed the private savings culture that had been built up over so many years. Then, if we look at age-related allowances alongside the insidious introduction of pensions means-testing, which was a massive attack on personal responsibility, it is extraordinary to hear arguments from the Labour party that the measures on age-related allowances somehow take away that personal responsibility given that it introduced a whole system that systematically wrecked the taking of personal responsibility. I think we need to hear a bit more humility from the Labour party and a bit more of an apology.