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Standing Committee D
Tuesday 25 May 2004
(Morning)
[Derek Conway in the Chair]
9.25 am
The Chairman: Before I call the Minister to move the programme motion, I want to say that it is in order for hon. Members to remove their jackets, if they so wish.
The Minister for Pensions (Malcolm Wicks): I beg to move,
(1) during proceedings on the Age-Related Payments Bill, in addition to its first meeting on Tuesday 25th May at 9.25 a.m., the Standing Committee shall meet on Tuesday 25th May at 2.30 p.m.;
(2) consideration of the Bill by the Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 7 p.m. on Tuesday 25th May;
(3) it be a recommendation of the Standing Committee that proceedings on consideration and Third Reading should (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on consideration or, if earlier, at the moment of interruption.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Conway. I think that it is my first such experience. The Bill is short, but important. It has one clear and simple objective in mind. It has been agreed through the usual channels that the Committee does not need to sit for two days, but that two sittings today will be adequate. Optimists may consider that we could finish our deliberations on the Bill this morning but, looking at members of the Committee, I am more on the pessimistic side.
Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne) (Con): I also welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Conway, and, in due course, your colleague, Mr. Pike. The Bill is short. It is good to see the old firm reunited after our discussions on the Pensions Bill a short time ago. I told my agent that I was not willing to debate Bills with fewer than 300 clauses, so the Bill under discussion today is a bit of a come down for me. I am reflecting on what to do with the four volumes of the Committee Hansard report that landed on my desk yesterday.
The Bill is interesting and there is much technical detail that we still want to drag out of the Minister. Incidentally, now that he has had chance to reflect on matters since the Bill was discussed on Second Reading and consult his diary, we are keen to find out whether he learned about the proposal at the same time as the rest of the nation, which was during the Budget speech. As the Committee will have gathered, the Bill has all the hallmarks of panic, hurried legislation. One thing that the Minister and I agree on is that the Bill has a clear and simple objective. Sadly, however, we do not agree about what that is.
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The Bill's clear and simple objective is to save the Government's electoral bacon. From my canvassing and my visit to the pensioners' parliament in Blackpool a few days ago, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not working. It is welcome that he is shoving half a billion pounds in the direction of those who are over 70. They will raise a glass to him, but I doubt whether it will gain a single vote or draw attention away from the enormous increase in council tax throughout the country, especially in the south, since the Government came to power. However, we can return to such issues in Committee. I am content with the programme motion and it is now time to get on with the Bill.
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD): Good morning, Mr. Conway. I hope that our deliberations will be one of the least onerous duties that the House has to perform and that we will be shot of this shabby and opportunistic Bill by the end of the day. We have entered into the spirit of scrutinising the Bill by breaking a tradition and tabling a few amendments to keep the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) busy. Although we have tabled amendments to clauses that will enable certain issues to be discussed, it would be helpful if the Minister could say a few words about those clauses to which no amendments have been tabled. I do not wish to detain the Committee. Let us hope that we can scrutinise the Bill expeditiously and enjoy the spring evening later today.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are on the Table. Adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule, my co-Chairman, Mr. Pike, and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including those that may be reached during the afternoon sitting. Clause 1
''Qualifying individual'' and ''relevant week''
Mr. Webb: I beg to move amendment No. 10, in
clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out from 'attains' to end and insert
'was born on or before 31st March 1935.'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 1, in
clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out '70' and insert '60'.
Mr. Webb: Amendment No. 10 is relatively straightforward. It says that entitlement to the payment of £100 should not merely be restricted to those people who have attained the age of 70 by the relevant qualifying week in September, but extended to cover those people who can be expected to reach the age of 70 by the end of 2004-05. We have defined that as individuals who were born on or before 31 March 1935.
In a sense, we are suspending disbelief and are supposing that what the Government say about their purposes in bringing forward the Bill is true. I appreciate that that might not last for the whole day,
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but we will humour them for now, take them at their word and assume that the Bill's purpose is to help older pensioners to pay their council tax. We will leave aside the fact that the payment that we are discussing is made irrespective of whether anybody has any council tax to pay. Something of a fiction is involved, but that is the Bill's stated basis and we will go along with it for now.
The question then is whether it is appropriate to say to people who reach the age of 70 in October or November 2004-05, which would be before most of the payments are even made, that they do not qualify. Anybody who reaches the age of 70 by the end of 2004-05 will have been 70 during a year in which they have to pay the inflated levels of council tax that people up and down the land are being asked to pay. If the Government are true to their word and are worried about the impact of the council tax on pensioners, particularly on older pensioners, why would they want to exclude people who are 70 at some point during a year in which they have to pay council tax?
The Minister could say that there are operational reasons for that and that the Government have chosen the dates in September because that coincides with the winter fuel payments. I believe that they think that they need to know in good time who will be applying for such payments so that they can work out how much those people are entitled to. Surely, in the case of the payments that we are discussing, we know at the start of 2004-05 when people were born. We know who is alive and was born on or before 31 March 1935. Therefore, in a way, we are doing the Government a favour. We are not saying that they must wait until September before they can work out to whom they should pay the money; we are telling them now. We will ease their administrative burden and help them to deliver those payments on time. I am sure that they will welcome the amendment.
The other objection that they might have is that some of those people might die before the end of the year. In other words, they might be paying money to widows, estates and so on. Anybody who, under the Government's rules, would have been 70 by the qualifying week would have spent at least six months paying their council tax in any case. Given that such people would have had to contribute to the vastly inflated council tax bills that pensioners must pay, why should they not be entitled to a payment? Paying that money to widows of people who were over 70 seems entirely unobjectionable. Presumably, widows are hit particularly hard by the council tax. If the amendment is accepted, the money will be payable to the estate, the widow or the widower of some people who will be dead before the end of the financial year. That does not seem to be a problem.
I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks it would cost to expand the scheme in that way; I am sure that he has costed it. Given that the whole scheme costs nearly £500 million, extending it for six months and involving people who are between 69 and a half and 70 on the qualifying date would be a relatively marginal change. I am sure that he will enlighten us on that point.
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I will comment on amendment No. 1 now so that I do not need to return to it. I am sure that the hon. Member for Eastbourne will make his remarks in due course. I must admit to having been rather startled to see it on the amendment paper. In the normal modest way of the Liberal Democrats, our amendment, if it were to be accepted, would make an incremental spending commitment, whereas the Conservative amendment would make a socking great spending commitment—I hope you will forgive the use of a technical term, Mr. Conway. It says that everybody between 60 and 70 should get the £100. That would doubtless add hundreds of millions of pounds to the cost. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Eastbourne has cleared it with his revered leader in this area, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), and whether has the authorisation to splash money around like confetti. That is obviously what he has in mind. Anyone would think that local elections were coming up in his constituency and that he potentially had a high pensioner vote. I do not know whether that is true or not, but it might be.
Given that the business of the £100 being to do with council tax is something of a fiction, the idea that we should extend the principle and that we should do so in the run-up to an election seems strange. I hope that when the hon. Member for Eastbourne speaks to amendment No. 1 he will tell us where he would find the money for the scheme, because I find wild, reckless tax and spend difficult to cope with.
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