Supporting British Pensioners
What recent steps he has taken to support British pensioners.
The Government are committed to supporting British pensioners to enjoy a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of work. That is why we are raising the state pension throughout this Parliament via the triple lock. That saw the state pension increase by 4.8% in April, boosting the level of the new state pension by £575 a year.
I thank the Minister for his reply, but he will know that my borough of Havering has the second largest number of older people in the entirety of Greater London. Nearly a quarter of my constituents are within that age bracket, and they are losing out. I know that the Government’s policy on the winter fuel allowance has changed, but it frightened them and made them ask whether Labour is really on their side. Will the Minister assure my constituents that the next Labour Administration will not target pensioners, but will give them the respect they deserve, and ensure that they have a happy and healthy retirement?
I can give the hon. Member the assurance he asks for, which is that this Labour Administration, like all Labour Administrations, are on the side of pensioners. Of course, he only defected earlier this year, so he was a Conservative MP during all 14 years of the Conservative party’s disastrous last Government—a Government who saw pensioner poverty rise and left one in five of those aged over 75 on NHS waiting lists. That is what letting down pensioners looks like.
Can the Minister set out what plans he has to make sure that today’s workers—tomorrow’s pensioners—enjoy a decent retirement?
That is a very important question. We need to make sure that those who will retire in 2050 can look forward to the same kind of comfortable retirements that many—not all, but many—of today’s pensioners enjoy, and the honest answer is that we are not on track for that at the moment. This Government are taking a two stage approach. We are driving up returns on pension savings now—that is what the Pensions Schemes Act 2026 does—but we are also doing the longer term work through the Pensions Commission to look at exactly the question of how we make sure that tomorrow’s pensioners can enjoy comfortable retirements. I promise that the commission will bring forward its report early next year.
I call the shadow Minister.
The Pensions Minister likes to spend a lot of time criticising the previous Government for their actions on pensioners. He also spends an awful lot of time talking up his legacy on helping pensioners, but his actions simply do not reflect the narrative. So far, he has capped salary sacrifice, there have been delays to the pensions dashboards, we have had retrospective changes to inheritance tax on pension pots, and—as we have heard—the Government are chasing hard up pensioners for their winter fuel allowance. All of this creates uncertainty among savers and pensioners alike, so I will repeat the question asked by the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell): is the Pensions Minister hopeful that his successor will do a better job of looking after pensioners?
I am incredibly hopeful that this Government are doing a much better job than the previous Government in supporting pensioners, not only by driving up the state pension, but by getting on with the much delayed reforms to our defined contribution pension system, which the previous Government left on ice. We are also coming forward with something much more important, because the biggest betrayal of older generations in Britain today is the state in which the Conservatives left our national health service.