Orders of the Day — Age-Related Payments Bill
House of Commons, 8 June 2004.
Clause 1 — "Qualifying Individual" And "Relevant Week"
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
I beg to move amendment No. 3, in page 1, line 6, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—
'(b) is already 70 years old at the start of the financial year ending 31st March 2005, or attains that age at any time during the said financial year, or was living with such a person who dies during the said financial year.'.
Michael Martin (Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 2, in page 1, line 6, leave out 'relevant week' and insert '31st March 2005'.
No. 9, in page 1, line 13 [Clause 2], leave out 'either'.
No. 10, in line 14, leave out from 'individual' to end of line 15.
No. 11, in line 19, leave out paragraph (b) and insert 'and'.
No. 4, in line 19, leave out from 'credit' to end of line 20.
No. 12, in page 2, line 3, leave out from 'individual' to end of line 7.
No. 13, in line 10, leave out from 'individual' to end of line 11.
No. 14, in line 40 [Clause 3], leave out subsection 4.
No. 15, in line 44, leave out subsection 5.
No. 16, in page 3, line 6, leave out subsection 6.
No. 18, in line 12 [Clause 4], leave out paragraph (a).
No. 19, in line 17, leave out paragraph (a).
No. 17, in page 5 [Clause 8], leave out lines 15 and 16.
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
On the theme of light, I am sure that most of us would rather be outside in the sunlight than in here. We are doing our duty, however, as this is an important measure.
My amendments—I tabled only two of the amendments in the group; the Liberal Democrats tabled the others—seek to revisit an argument that was explored in Committee. It is worth revisiting, however, as it is on the issue of eligibility.
The Bill is all about giving elderly people a £100 payment to help them to pay their council tax bills, although it does not require people to pay council tax to receive the money. We have been round that course a couple of times, however, and the issue is eligibility. The Government included a requirement that only those who are 70—or over, obviously—during the week of 20 to 26 September this year will qualify. I suppose that they did so for reasons of administrative simplicity, and because that is the qualifying period for winter fuel payments.
Our amendments Nos. 3 and 2—principally amendment No. 3—would help all those who reach the age of 70 during this financial year, not just those who were 70 or over during the week of 20 to 26 September. Amendment No.3 would also help those who were living with someone aged 70 or over where the person had died before the qualifying week arrived. It helps two groups of people who are not being helped because of the rough justice of the Government's proposed system of administration. It will help those who turn 70 after 26 September, who under the Bill will not get any money, but who are paying council tax bills for this financial year, and indeed have probably already done so. It will also help those who are paying in instalments. Furthermore, it will help widows, widowers and partners of people who were 70 and who paid their council tax bills, but who died before the magic qualifying week.
Of course, those people would have been alive to hear the Chancellor promising them that money. I do not suggest that £100 would make up for the loss of a relative, husband, wife or partner, but the situation seems a little unfair.
When the Chancellor made his Budget speech, he produced the proposal with a great flourish—it was the big bit that he was saving for the end of his speech that was announced at the last minute and designed to get a cheer from Labour Members. After listening to him, one would not have imagined that some people who would be aged over 70 during the financial year and had to pay council tax bills would not be eligible—he certainly did not spell that out.
When the Chancellor made the announcement, he had little idea that primary legislation would be required to bring about the £100 payment. The Bill has presumably been pushed upon the Chancellor and the Government because he did not consult the Department for Work and Pensions before he made the announcement. The Department had to go to him after the event to say, "Hold on Chancellor, you're going to need a full piece of primary legislation here", and that is why the details were not spelled out in the Budget speech.
The Conservative amendments address the basic point of what the Bill is about. It is designed to help elderly people to pay their council tax bills. The bills landed on their doorsteps in early April or late March, and they have already paid them or are paying them in instalments. Although the measure is linked to winter fuel payments, there is a big difference between the schemes. People receive winter fuel payments on the basis of the qualifying week between 20 and 26 September because the scheme is linked to the winter, so September is a good time to ascertain which people will be 70 during the forthcoming winter. However, the Bill is linked to council tax bills, which are issued in April. I do not understand why, for simple reasons of administrative efficiency, the Government are excluding people who will be 70 in the forthcoming year and paying high council tax bills. Such people are on fixed incomes and are exactly the kind of elderly pensioners whom the Chancellor mentioned. However, by a fiat of Whitehall, they will not receive the money which they are due. That is unfair and it is not what they would have expected after listening to the Chancellor. The amendments would achieve the simple objective of allowing the Government to live up to their word.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
When I saw the eight-minute speech limit sign flash up on the Annunciator, I thought that there had been a sudden rush of interest in the Age-Related Payments Bill and that hon. Members were queueing up to have their say. I then realised that the limit related to far more important matters, such as where airports should go. As the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) said, the Bill is important. It will lead to the spending of nearly £500 million of public money, so slightly more than desultory attention should be paid to it—it will probably get that this afternoon.
There are two kinds of amendments in the group. As the hon. Gentleman said, the first kind revisits arguments that we had in Committee. Liberal Democrats advocated similar arguments about which 70-year-olds should be eligible: should they be those who reach 70 by the week in September or should there be a more generous interpretation under the scheme? The Minister is a generous man, so I am sure that he will want to accept the amendments with a generosity of spirit.
If the Bill is supposed to help people who are 70 and have to pay council tax, why would we want to exclude from its provisions people who reached 70 during the year and started to pay council tax in April? One amendment would provide that if people reached the age of 70 by the end of the financial year, a payment could be made to them. Such people might spend half the year at the age of 70, but despite paying council tax for that time, they will not receive a penny from the Government or qualify for anything.
As the hon. Member for Tatton rightly pointed out, one can see the convenience of linking the payment with the winter fuel payments, but there is no winter aspect to it. Since it runs from last April to next March, we think that people who reach 70 at any point during the year ought to qualify.
If the typical council tax is about £900 for a band D property, and knocking off a quarter for the single person's discount makes it about £675, the £100 payment is only a tiny fraction of the council tax bill. If a 70-year-old were 70 for only half the year, he or she would still pay more than £300 in council tax while 70 but would not qualify for £100 from the Government towards that bill; they would qualify for nothing because they became 70 at the wrong point in the year. It is a bit daft to use a cut-off point that has something to do with winter, which is related to an entirely different system for help with fuel costs. It means transposing that system into something to do with council tax, which is not seasonal but requires payments pretty much throughout the year. I sympathise with the amendment that would allow the payment to be made by the end of the financial year, and I recall from Committee that, in the context of the £500 million cost of the Bill, the cost of including those who become 70 in the second half of the year would be relatively marginal and would not upset the overall balance of the scheme.
Since Committee, we have tabled amendments that arose, in the true spirit of parliamentary scrutiny, from the Minister's responses. When we looked at the Bill in detail, we discovered some unpalatable aspects to it. One is the fact that the £100 is not universal, as we had thought, but means-tested. The public do not appreciate that whether someone gets £100 depends on whether they are receiving a means-tested benefit. That is not widely understood.
The Minister has been very helpful. I raised some hypothetical cases with him in Committee, and within the last hour my fax machine has whizzed away as he has made sure that, in plenty of time for this debate, I had the details of how the system works. It is worth putting a couple of examples on the record that illustrate quite how beautifully the new scheme will work. The Government think in terms of pensioner households, but there ain't no such thing: there are individual pensioners living in different combinations, each of whom, known in the jargon as a benefit unit, has an entitlement to the age-related payment.
The Minister has given me two examples. One involves three sisters—the Beverly sisters, perhaps, all now over 70, I imagine—who are living together and none of whom is in receipt of pension credit. Each of them would get £50. On the other hand, two brothers—the Righteous brothers, maybe; I do not know how many of them there were—over 70 and living together while in receipt of pension credit would get £100 each. That pensioner household would get £200, but the payment is supposed to be £100. Why do they get £200? It is because they are poor. So poor people get more, but the payment is not means-tested: I do not quite follow that logic.
Another of our amendments would remove another perversity. If one lives in a nursing home, the Government do the opposite to the foregoing. Poor people in nursing homes get nothing, but those in nursing homes who are not on pension credit get £50. Where is the logic in that? When we pressed the Minister, he said that poor people in nursing homes have their council tax paid for them. Lots of people have their council tax paid but can get the £100 if they do not live in a nursing home.
The more we looked at the Bill, the more riddled with inconsistencies we found it. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I am told that the Bill mirrors precisely the arrangements for the winter fuel payment, which means that that is far more means-tested than I had realised. We have tabled a lot of amendments because the Bill is riddled with means-testing. The words "pension credit" appear all over the place, and the question must be why, if the payment is a flat-rate, universal one, the Bill refers to pension credit at all.
In fact, this is a means-tested payment that the Chancellor dressed up as a universal one. Had he said at the end of the Budget that he would introduce a £100 payment, but it would be means-tested and how much anyone would get would depend on whether they were on pension credit, who they lived with and whether they were on pension credit, and whether they were in a nursing home, his reception would not have been quite as rapturous as it was.
The amendments are intended to remove every reference in the Bill to pension credit. The effect would be, we hope—amendments do not always do quite what we intend them to do—to say that the amount people get should be fixed and should not be means-tested. That would not enhance the payments of people on pension credit, but those in nursing homes would not be penalised for being on pension credit, which seems right. There is a long string of amendments, but there is one point to them: why are we making a universal payment, then introducing all sorts of aspects of means-testing to determine how much is paid?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that while there are special arrangements for pension credit households, he understands that there is no separate means test for the £100? I should hate those listening to think that some income-testing system is being introduced to determine the £100 payment. It is not so.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
The Minister has given me fresh wind. It may be that there is a household of two people not on pension credit who get £50 each. If one of them then applies for the pension credit, that one gets £100. The means test applied to determine whether he was eligible for pension credit carries across to the £100 payment. I do not want to give a misleading impression, and I am not suggesting that there is separate means-testing when someone claims the age-related payment, although, in general, people will not have to claim it because it should be automatic. I am saying, however, that the amount anyone gets depends on whether they are claiming a means-tested benefit, which is certainly not the impression that the Chancellor gave at the end of his Budget speech.
In the spirit of what the Chancellor said, we would have expected there to be no mention of pension credit in the Bill, and we would especially not have expected any bizarre business about three sisters not on credit getting £50, or £150 for that household, when the payment is supposed to be £100. How can a household get £150? Simply, it is because the payment is not a payment per household. It is just a mess, and it is disappointing that a Department implementing such a simple policy has made such a mess of it. We are trying to help the Department by simplifying the Bill and stripping out all the complexity to do with means-testing by introducing a straight entitlement, which I am sure will find favour with the Government.
Alan Hurst (Labour, Braintree)
It seems to me that Jeremiah is not only the prophet of Scottish Members, but is widely favoured among the Opposition. I fully understand the points made by the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), but I see certain flaws in his argument. I could understand his logic more if he had suggested that those who were 69 at the beginning of the financial year were eligible. Then, there would be a clear date after which people would qualify.
The hon. Gentleman's amendment would allow payment to be made before the recipient became 70. It may be that, for various reasons, those people would fail to qualify afterwards: death is the most obvious, but people might move out of the jurisdiction or a range of events might subsequently disqualify a recipient. If the amendment referred to someone being 69 at the beginning of the financial year, there would be a greater logical force to his argument.
I had hoped for more joy from the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) about what the Government have brought in, which is widely regarded as a most helpful measure. One can always find financial improvements in any measure, and it is always better to simplify measures to make them less complicated than they might otherwise be, but the Bill has the great advantage that claimants do not have to go to great lengths to claim and that the payment is made automatically on the basis of information that the Department already has. In that way, it compares well with certain other benefits that have been paid in the past.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
As has been set out already by the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), this is a relatively simple measure. Its intention is to pay all eligible households containing someone aged 70 or over an extra £100 this year in recognition of the burden of council tax increases on many of those households. It was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Budget speech.
We reasoned that the best way to deliver that payment would be through the winter fuel payment process, a tried and tested system that is popular and works well. Many of the arguments made today, some of which are perfectly legitimate, relate to that methodology. All such matters are kept under review—I mean that seriously—and some of that methodology perhaps needs further scrutiny, but many of the issues raised relate to that.
The hon. Member for Tatton mentioned fiats of Whitehall, which sounds rather like a local car dealer. He made quite heavy weather out of what is really a simple measure. The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) has a great art of making the relatively simple sound vastly complex. That is quite an endearing trait, but to build a whole political career on it could become tiresome. I was reflecting that I am glad that it was not the hon. Gentleman on the radio this morning explaining exactly how and why Venus is passing in front of the sun; otherwise, I should have been even more confused by that than I am.
This group of amendments would revise clauses 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 to change who is a qualifying individual, the link between the eligibility criteria and the relevant week, entitlement conditions for both basic and special cases, disqualifications and, as a consequence of the changes to clause 2, definitions of terms used in the Bill.
Amendments Nos. 3 and 2 would amend clause 1 by extending the payment to include people who will reach the age of 70 on or before 31 March 2005, at an additional cost of about £20 million. We believe that deferring the data-matching process to allow people to attain age 70 by 31 March would delay the making of automatic payments. Under current arrangements, those will be made in November, at a point at which the money is needed because pensioners are still paying this year's council tax bills. As the data match takes five to six weeks, those amendments would mean that automatic payments could not be made until May 2005—too late to help with this year's bills.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
One reason why we tabled that amendment in a slightly different way in Committee— using the definition of people's dates of birth—was that that information is known at the start of the financial year. The Department would not have to wait until those people reached 70 before doing the data matching, but could do that at the start of the financial year because it would know who would reach 70 during that year. Obviously, arrangements would be needed for people who died, but we might be concerned about widows and their council tax, too.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
Sadly, that is the difficulty—we cannot quite predict who will still be there later in the year. I should point out that by extending the qualifying date to September, using the winter fuel payment methodology, we have brought an additional 210,000 pensioner households into the payment since it was announced on 17 March. I hope that we will not be accused of a lack of generosity because the September deadline has now allowed that extra group to be included.
Amendment No. 3 would extend qualifying individual status to anyone who lived with someone who was aged 70 or over but had died during the current financial year. That would allow anyone who shared accommodation with such a person to become a qualifying individual, eligible for the payment. If the person aged 70 or over died before the relevant week, they would not have gained entitlement to the payment, but the person who lived with them would do so purely as a result of their death. This is probably a drafting problem, but that would theoretically mean that a 12-year-old grandchild, a 30-year-old rent-paying lodger or a 40-year-old live-in carer could become a qualified individual and receive the payment simply by virtue of living with a person who was aged 70 or over before they died. That might not be the amendment's intention, but it is what it means in technical and legal terms.
Amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 would remove the automatic £100 household payment from all qualifying single pension credit recipients and align their entitlement with that of non-pension credit recipients. That would mean depriving some older and poorer pensioners of half their entitlement. Almost 70 per cent. of pension credit recipients are aged 70 or over, and of those 83 per cent. are single pensioners. We have had a brief discussion about whether the special arrangements for pension credit households represent a means-testing element in the Bill, but I was pleased that the hon. Member for Northavon agreed that we are not attempting to introduce a separate income-testing arrangement especially for this measure.
Amendment No. 4 would change conditions in clause 2 that govern how much qualifying individuals will receive. It would have the perverse effect of allowing two payments, totalling £150, to be made to single individuals who do not live with another qualifying individual and who are not in receipt of pension credit. As clause 2 stands, a qualifying individual can fall into either the £100 payment category or a £50 payment category, but not both. If a single eligible person receives pension credit, they will automatically receive £100 irrespective of with whom they live. If they do not live with another qualifying individual, they will receive £100 irrespective of whether they receive pension credit. That leaves only the situation in which a single eligible person is not on pension credit and is living with another eligible person. That person will receive £50.
Amendment No 4, however, would remove the condition of living with another qualifying individual from the £50 payment category, which would leave the default position that a single eligible person not living with another qualifying individual and not receiving pension credit would become eligible for the £50 payment. As those people are already in the £100 payment category, they would be eligible to receive both payments, giving a total of £150. The amendment would mean that that group of people would receive a higher payment than couples, having become eligible, in effect, for more than the full payment. Again, I suspect that that was not the intention of the amendment, but it would be its effect and impact.
Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 would change the payment condition for members of the more than 225,000 couples who receive pension credit. Where both members of a couple qualified for a payment, they would each receive £50, rather than the current provision for a single £100 household payment to be made to the pension credit recipient. That would mean establishing the eligibility of every pension credit recipient's partner, and those who qualified would receive a separate £50 payment while their partner's household entitlement was adjusted from £100 to £50. There would then be two payments, two letters and double postage costs to deliver the same £100 to the same couple in the same household. Again, we are following the logic of the winter fuel payment system in the Bill, which is simpler and more sensible.
Amendments Nos. 14, 15 and 16 would remove from clause 3 the specific entitlement and payment conditions for people aged 70 or over who have been living in care homes for 13 weeks or more. That would mean making a payment to all care home residents, even where their care and accommodation needs were being met through public funds, at an additional cost of some £7 million. As drafted, the Bill provides for care home residents not receiving pension credit to be eligible for a £50 payment because they are sharing their accommodation with others and it is safe to assume that they are contributing at least in part to their care home costs. Care home residents receiving pension credit are not entitled to a payment because it is equally safe to assume that people in receipt of pension credit have their care and accommodation needs met through public funds.
The effect of amendments Nos. 18 and 19 would be to remove disqualification from those who have been receiving free in-patient hospital treatment or care continuously for 52 weeks or more, even though their day-to-day living expenses, including heating and food, are provided by public funds through the health service. That would extend eligibility to some 6,000 people aged 70 or over who have been in hospital for more than a year, at a cost of about £600,000.
I understand the intention behind the amendment, but I hope that Members will accept my explanation that it would not constitute a good use of public resources, and that they recognise that this Government have made great improvements in what is known as the hospital downrating of benefit by enabling people to keep that benefit for a year.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
The logic of the Minister's argument concerning people who live in care homes is that those who pay towards care home costs get the £50, and those who are on pension credit and who do not pay towards the costs get nothing. As he will confirm, these payments are intended to help with council tax. If he is arguing that such people should not receive these payments because they do not pay council tax, what about the 1 million or more pensioners on pension credit who also do not pay council tax? Why are there different rules for the two groups of people?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I understand the question and it is a perfectly reasonable one. We discussed this issue in Committee, and while the intention behind the £100 payment for this year arises from concern about the burden of council tax, we nevertheless sought to make the payment in a broad-brush way through the winter fuel payment system. Yes, there will be rough edges, and there may even be an element of rough justice here and there, but this is the simplest way to get the money to those who need it.
At the risk of accusing the hon. Member for Northavon of occasionally being inconsistent, I should point out that adopting a more sophisticated system that ties public moneys to the particular burdens facing particular individuals in particular parts of the country, and which allows for whether or not they are in care homes, would take us down a far more complex road. It would probably involve some form of income testing, and I doubt whether he is in favour of such testing in this era.
I do not intend to elaborate further on the issue of hospital downrating, given that we discussed it at considerable length in Committee and divided on it. Clause 8 contains definitions of terms used in the Bill and amendment No. 17 would remove the definition of state pension credit. As I have said repeatedly, we are aligning the rules and procedures for entitlement to payment with those for winter fuel payments—with which such payments will be made—to keep the process simple. Moving away from this tried and tested process would incur additional administrative costs in excess of £20 million and would lead to a delay in the making of payments, at least for some. In the light of that explanation, I hope that the Opposition will consider withdrawing the amendment.
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
This has been quite an interesting debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on some of his contributions. I was saddened to see that he did not include on the selection list an amendment that would give everyone who pays council tax a £100 payment. Of course, such a payment was Liberal Democrat policy during the Brent, East by-election, but it was strangely dropped soon afterwards. We are now waiting for the Liberal Democrats' Leicester, South policy.
The Minister rather made my case for me at the end of his speech when he talked about elements of rough justice. He is right, and I made the same point on introducing the amendments: because of the Government's chosen administrative mechanism, some of the people who really should be getting the £100 will lose out. If the £100 payment is linked to people who pay council tax and is designed to help the elderly and those on fixed incomes, those who reach 70 after 26 September but who have paid council tax bills for this year really should receive the money. I am not a Department for Work and Pensions official who has pored over this issue—[Interruption.] The Minister pays me the tribute of saying that I would make a very good DWP official, but unfortunately I did not sit my civil service exams all those years ago.
I do not know whether there is a simple way of identifying such people, and the Minister did not explain whether the Government considered paying those who will reach 70 after 26 September. Nor am I sure what devices were at the DWP's disposal, but as the legislation is currently constructed some people will be caught on its rough edges. I suppose that the Government's chosen delivery mechanism does expose the fiction that this payment is linked to council tax, given that some people who do not pay council tax will in fact receive it. The provision has served that purpose if nothing else, but that said, I do not wish to detain the House further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 — Power To Provide For Payments
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
I beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 4, line 14, leave out clause 7.
Michael Martin (Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 7, in page 4, line 15, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.
No. 20, in title, line 2, leave out from '70' to end of line 3.
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
These amendments deal with the extraordinary clause 7, which is extraordinary because it gives the Government wide-ranging powers to provide future one-off payments not just to those aged over 70, in the manner we have just discussed, but to those aged over 60. Absolutely no explanation has been given as to why the Government wanted to take that power upon themselves. Of course, if things had not been messed up at the beginning—had the Chancellor not said that primary legislation is required to introduce the measure announced in the Budget—he would not have needed to introduce such primary legislation to give himself this broad-ranging power. I suppose that the DWP said to the Chancellor, "We're going to have to introduce this primary legislation to implement your Budget announcement. I am sorry that we weren't consulted on this and that we have to bring you this bad news, but while we are taking the Bill through the House, why don't we give ourselves a general power to make special one-off payments to those aged over 60?"
What, one wonders, is so special about the age of 60? Will not the general state retirement age be 65 once the retirement age for women is increased? No explanation has been given as to why the age of 60 has been chosen. What payments do the Government envisage making? Perhaps they are a continuation of the payments in respect of council tax. If so, the Government presumably expect council tax bills to continue to increase at the same very high rate at which they have increased since they took office. Perhaps they want to ensure that next year, they can give a dollop of money to elderly people to pay for their council tax. Perhaps they will introduce the same mechanism of a qualifying week. Perhaps they will restrict the provision to those over 70, or to those over 60. Perhaps a distinction will be drawn between men and women. Perhaps women over 60 and men over 65 will qualify. However, we know none of these details because no explanation has been given as to why this general power is being included in the Bill.
Presumably, the main reason for the power is to prevent the Chancellor's being embarrassed again, so that he can make such Budget announcements without needing to implement them through primary legislation. The Minister is a clever man, and I well understand why he wants to keep in with the Chancellor at the moment. That is sensible politics, but it is not really a good enough reason to introduce such a wide-ranging power. The Minister can presumably confirm that there is no requirement that such payments be linked to council tax, even in debating terms. Such payments could be for anything: summertime payments, springtime payments, or payments for those aged 77 precisely. This is a very wide-ranging power.
I have decided to try to help the Minister by giving him a menu of options. [Interruption.] As he again says from a sedentary position, I am behaving like a DWP official.
Here is the range of options. I suspect that the Minister will not accept one of them as he would one of the options suggested by DWP officials, but there we are.
Amendment No. 7 would allow the clause to remain in the Bill, but would change the word "may" to "shall" in subsection (1). In other words, if the Government want to take this power upon themselves, they need to tell us what exactly they envisage. If the Government have some scheme that they are dreaming up, let us hear about it now, so that we can decide whether it is good or bad. If it is good, we can allow it to remain in the Bill. Changing the word "may" to "shall" forces the Government's hand. They cannot then put something in the locker and bring it out on some future convenient occasion. They would have to do it now and reveal their hand.
If the Government do not want that and are not dreaming anything up at the moment, I am afraid that amendment No. 8 would be applicable. It would simply remove the clause from the Bill. I should also point out that amendment No. 20 would amend the Bill's long title. That long title is itself something of a giveaway. It says that the Bill is to
"make provision for payments by the Secretary of State to persons over the age of 70; and to enable provision to be made for payments by the Secretary of State to persons over the age of 60."
The extra bit is the new power that the Government are taking upon themselves. As I said, if the Government cannot accept amendment No. 7, they should accept amendment No. 8 and remove the wide-ranging power from the Bill.
It is easy for Governments and bureaucracies to use every opportunity to accumulate power, even if they do not know when they are going to use it. However, it is not right for Parliament, which exists to safeguard the interests of the taxpayer and to protect the liberties of the subject, to hand over these general powers to the Minister, at least without his having some specific scheme in mind.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
You will see, Mr. Speaker, that I added my name to amendment No. 8 and I believe that we divided in Committee on a similar amendment. We agree absolutely that clause 7 should have no part in the Bill.
I was reflecting on the matter this morning when it occurred to me that the Department for Work and Pensions gets rather blasé about zeros. Most Departments would regard £1 million or £2 million here or there as pretty serious money. They think of it in terms of a school extension, a new ward in a hospital and so on. The odd million here or there certainly adds up to some serious money, but the Department for Work and Pensions does not have that approach. This Bill spends nearly £0.5 billion and by accident we have some primary legislation to put it into effect.
Clause 7 gives the Government the power to spend another £0.5 billion, with no scrutiny or power to amend it whatever. I believe that clause 7 amounts to a constitutional outrage. It will give the Government the power to introduce an unlimited scheme. If they want to, the Government can pay everyone over the age of 60 any amount of money for any reason. Paying £100 to the over-70s costs £0.5 billion, so what would paying winter fuel payments to the over-60s cost? We could be talking about billions of pounds. In the context of the DWP, I suppose that that amounts to a rounding error, but in the context of wider Government priorities, the idea of giving just one Department the power to spend such vast amounts of money on the strength of a 90-minute debate in a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation seems truly extraordinary.
We—Parliament—would not have the power to amend the proposals. If the Government's scheme were acceptable in principle but contained detailed flaws, we would not even have the right to change it. We would have to accept or reject the whole measure on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, yet potentially the £0.5 billion is at stake. That amount is neither fanciful nor hypothetical; it is what we are spending today. A further £0.5 billion could be spent without our having the chance to change it. That is totally unacceptable. The Bill has hardly been subject to rigorous scrutiny, but we have spent plenty of hours on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report today, looking at the details and debating them. The idea that the principle has been established that it is okay to pay out lump sums whenever the Government feel like it, so that we do not have to go through all this inconvenient scrutiny ever again, seems to me absolutely incredible.
The principal reason why clause 7 should not be in the Bill is that it gives the Government the power to bring in unlimited spending. There is not even a cap in the Bill. It does not say that spending can be made by regulation up to a fairly modest amount, with serious legislation being required for larger amounts. It simply allows the Government to do anything they fancy to anyone over 60 on any basis whatever, with negligible scrutiny. That is the fundamental objection.
We should not give the Government these sweeping powers without some indication of what might motivate them to make these payments. We have had winter fuel payments, but they were never really much to do with winter fuel. The only aspect of winter fuel about the payment was the fact that it was made in the winter—I should say winterish, as I think that the first-year payment was made in the spring. It had nothing to do with winter fuel. People could spend it on whatever they liked—holidays abroad and the rest of it.
Similarly, the council tax payment has nothing really to do with the council tax. It is an arbitrary excuse for the Government to hand over some cash to a particular section of the electorate. Who are we talking about? I exaggerate only slightly when I say that it is the only people who actually vote. We may find that out on Thursday. In other words, the Government sat down, thought that they were in a pickle over the council tax and wondered what they could do about it. They did not have an answer, so they needed a holding position. It is a pretty expensive holding position—£0.5 billion of taxpayers' money—just to get the Government out of a fix. Is that really the basis on which we should be legislating in this place? It is bad enough doing so after a Budget speech through primary legislation, but doing so as clause 7 allows—on the whim of a statutory instrument—is just unbelievable.
It is the Government's track record that causes concern about the powers in the Bill. I recall that the birth of the winter fuel payment was connected with the fact that the Government received an unexpected refund of the EU contribution. The Chancellor of the day—in 1997, if I recall correctly—suddenly found that he had some extra cash that he was not expecting to have. The House may have forgotten that the winter fuel payment was introduced for people who were not on income support—of course, it was means-tested at that point—at the level of £20. Now we are up in the realms of £400, so these things do have a knack of growing spectacularly.
The Government seem to introduce such payments on an almost ad hoc basis. It is worth reminding ourselves that the winter fuel payment was also introduced through a statutory instrument because it was a social fund payment. It used the word "fuel" even though it had nothing to do with fuel, so it could be introduced under social fund legislation, which provides for payments for fuel costs. That is why no primary legislation was required. I recall wondering for many minutes why I had never sat on a Committee considering a winter fuel payments Bill. The answer is that the Government did not require primary legislation; they already had the power to hand over what amounted to billions of pounds in respect of winter fuel payments.
The Government have a track record and they have form. They find a pot of money, wonder what to spend it on, and invent a scheme. They have done the same thing with the council tax in the Age-Related Payments Bill. The Government get into a mess, wonder what to do and come up with a scheme.
Gwyneth Dunwoody (Labour, Crewe and Nantwich)
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman's argument—and, indeed, that of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne)—very carefully. Is he telling me that when these measures were debated, his party opposed them on the grounds that Her Majesty's Government were simply handing out money to people who, as he said, could spend it on holidays? I did not notice that argument being made by either party at the time.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
The reason why the hon. Lady did not notice it was that there was no debate. If she had been listening to what I said a few moments ago, she would know that there was no debate over the winter fuel payment. There was no winter fuel payment Bill because the Government introduced the measure, if I recall correctly, on the basis of negative resolution procedure in a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation. We never actually debated these matters. That is precisely the point that I am making. Clause 7 gives the Government the power, any time that they come up with a wheeze, to make payments on any basis that they like. They can call them winter fuel payments, although there is no link to winter fuel, or call them council tax payments, although there is no link to the council tax. The clause gives the Government a blanket power to make payments whenever they feel like it.
I know that the hon. Lady is a doughty campaigner for parliamentary scrutiny. She ought to feel as uncomfortable as I do about giving the Government the power to bring in a scheme costing £500 million or more with just 90 minutes of scrutiny, especially when the provision is totally unamendable.
The key point is that this power is huge and sweeping. Parliament will not be able to have any serious scrutiny of what the Government might come up with. The Government have a track record of introducing such ideas whenever they are in a pickle or have a windfall. It is totally unacceptable that that should be the basis of support for old people.
What do older people have to look forward to under this Government? The answer is wheezes, schemes and gizmos—when there is a bit of money to hand. They should be able to look forward to getting decent, secure incomes every year. Those incomes should not be available only when the Government have a bit of money or are in a mess over the local tax system. The Government should give up on clause 7.
The Minister should accept amendment No. 8. We need a proper support system for older people, planned ahead of time so that they know what is coming. In contrast, this Bill will literally be here today and gone tomorrow, as it offers one payment to be made because a problem exists and there is a bit of money to solve it with.
We often discuss what the Minister thinks about as he lies on his bed at night—[Interruption.]
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is not him.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
I hope that the Minister will spare me a thought, and that he will ponder whether the best way to support pensioners is for the Government to have the power to produce new schemes and handouts whenever they are in a pickle or come up with a bright idea. Would it not be better for older people to have a decent, secure and long-term income, instead of yet another scheme?
Alan Hurst (Labour, Braintree)
Again, I shall keep my remarks brief. I am astounded at some of what the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) has said. He described the amendment as though it were of such seismic constitutional importance that we could expect the Opposition Benches to be filled with the serried ranks of Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
They will be here.
Alan Hurst (Labour, Braintree)
The Bill is a very positive development. It will not take anything away from people: it will not narrow down our citizens' liberties, or penalise them financially. However, it will allow the Government to move quickly to help those people in our community who are often in the greatest need. The provision will mean that people will not have to wait a long time for help that may not, in the end, be made available.
It may be right to say that there is a lot that we could do on a more permanent basis to revise the pensions structure. I have never been ashamed to admit that I believe in restoring the earnings link, and I am sure that that will happen.
Gwyneth Dunwoody (Labour, Crewe and Nantwich)
Hear, hear.
Alan Hurst (Labour, Braintree)
However, when an urgent need arises the Government must also be able to do something about it fairly quickly. I therefore have the greatest pleasure in supporting the Bill. It is full of positive help for a large section of our community, and it has been disappointing to hear the rather mean-spirited criticism of this beneficial measure.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what the urgent need was this summer?
Alan Hurst (Labour, Braintree)
I have knocked around in politics for the best part of 40-odd years. Usually, opponents of the Government say that the system governing payment of rates—or council tax, or poll tax—is dreadful. The hon. Gentleman and his party have always complained that council tax is especially unfair to people on fixed incomes. The Government have produced a scheme that will assist those people very quickly, and they have not chosen to push off into the wide blue—or yellow—yonder with debates about alternative schemes.
I therefore thoroughly welcome the Bill. I certainly do not propose to support the amendment.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
This simple and rather innocent little Bill has provoked suggestions of all sorts of conspiracies, and other things. At one stage today, I thought that there would be an outbreak of party politics. The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) spoke about the Government being blasé with zeros, and I thought that he would attack the jests made by the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) about the Brent by-election and what I assume was a Liberal Democrat promise of £100. However, I do not want to go into the matter of the Brent bouncing cheque as the people of this great country are sitting at home and quietly contemplating how to cast their votes on Thursday. We should not raise discussion of this subject to fever pitch in that way.
The hon. Member for Northavon inquired—somewhat cheekily, I thought—about what I think of at night. I shall not discuss that, as I just try to get to sleep. However, sitting in my garden, I do occasionally think about the great contributions made by Liberals in the past. I have to keep reminding the hon. Gentleman that Lloyd George was the one who introduced the old-age pension, and the work of the great William Beveridge must also be borne in mind. The Liberal contribution to social reform since the 1940s has been rather disappointing, but the party's track record can always be improved.
Amendments Nos. 8 and 7 seek, respectively, to remove clause 7 altogether on the one hand, and on the other hand to mandate the Secretary of State to invoke the powers provided in the clause. The amendments would remove from the long title of the Bill the reference to the enabling provision for payments to be made by the Secretary of State to people aged over 60. We discussed clause 7 at length in Committee, but it may be helpful to the House if I reiterate its purpose.
Clause 7 provides a regulation-making power so that, if circumstances warrant it, future payments may be made to people aged 60 or over that may be related to age or other circumstances. The power will enable the Department to legislate swiftly, should a need arise.
We have always made it clear that this payment of £100 is for this year only, and to meet a specific need—the impact of recent council tax increases on the fixed incomes of older pensioners. During the Bill's passage, we have debated at great length the principle of making one-off payments to pensioners to meet specific needs in that way. It would be expensive and time consuming to have to introduce primary legislation, and therefore have the debate again, every time such a payment were warranted.
Any regulations made using this power will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure and, as such, will be debated by both Houses. They will also come within the remit of the Social Security Advisory Committee.
I hope that the House will accept that the purpose of the clause is to avoid the situation that we are in, and that we will use the power only if it is prudent to do so.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
Will the Minister confirm that he just said that it would be time consuming to scrutinise properly a future Government decision to spend £500 million or more?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I am saying that we need a mechanism that will allow us to introduce payments as speedily as is consistent with proper scrutiny. Indeed, some Opposition Members attacked the Government on Second Reading for using primary legislation for this purpose, and wondered why this approach was necessary.
Amendment No. 7 would oblige the Secretary of State to make future payments to those aged 60 or over. In Committee, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) stated that the purpose of the same amendment was to probe the matter. Given our discussions on Second Reading, in Committee and again today, it has been very thoroughly probed.
On Second Reading and in Committee, the hon. Gentleman asked to see draft regulations, but I repeat what I told him on those occasions—that there are no draft regulations, and no current plans to invoke this power. At this point, we cannot predict the future use of the regulation-making power, but we can say with certainty that, by providing for future payments to be made through secondary legislation, we are keeping costs and the use of parliamentary time to a minimum. I should have expected that to be welcomed by hon. Members, given the criticism from some quarters on Second Reading.
Robert Smith (Liberal Democrat, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Does the Minister accept that parliamentary time spent scrutinising legislation is well spent if it helps us to avoid the pitfalls that might be encountered when a provision goes through unamended and unscrutinised?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
Of course, and that is why this Bill is being scrutinised properly—although there is not as much demand for proper scrutiny as one might expect. If they are invoked, the powers contained in the regulations will be scrutinised in Committee in the usual way for secondary legislation, and the Social Security Advisory Committee will also scrutinise them. However, I thank the hon. Gentleman for dropping in on our debates on this important matter.
Robert Smith (Liberal Democrat, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
If the Minister had been a little more observant, he would have noticed that I was present for quite a lot of the debate on this group of amendments and the previous group. When I have left the Chamber, it has been to have discussions through the usual channels to facilitate the progress of this debate.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I certainly noticed that the hon. Gentleman was here for parts of the debate, but he was not here for all of it, so I do not think that I need to apologise. He has already made a far more substantial contribution than one member of our Committee, whose major contribution was to ask for the blinds in the Committee Room to be raised and who then had to leave on other urgent business. That is one way to shed light on the debate.
I ask the hon. Member for Tatton to withdraw the amendment.
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
We have had an enjoyable debate. I welcomed the support from the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) for Conservative policy on the linking of the state pension to earnings. Support was also expressed from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). It would be great if we could lock the doors now and have a vote on the issue, because we would win.
The Minister gave no explanation for the Government's actions beyond the fact that they want to have a mechanism for the future. He said that he did not want to waste Parliament's time by introducing primary legislation again. However, the clause would give the Government very wide powers to introduce almost any kind of benefit targeted at people over the age of 60. Clause 7 (2) states:
"Regulations . . . may provide for payments to be made . . . to persons in a specified class (which may be defined by reference to age or otherwise) . . . in specified circumstances."
One can almost envisage the Government introducing a major new benefit under that power. It is not even limited to repeating the payment that will be made under the Bill. If the Government had made clause 7 say that they might make the same payment to the same group of people in subsequent years, they would have had a better argument. By putting the age of 60 into the clause, they have revealed that they have other future payments in mind.
The comments by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on parliamentary scrutiny were spot on. We cannot allow such wide powers to stay on the face of the Bill and therefore we seek to press the amendment to a Division.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This is a simple Bill, as we have discussed, although it has created some controversy. It will make real the promise given in the Budget to pay all eligible households with someone aged over 70 an extra £100 this year, in recognition of the impact of recent council tax increases on the fixed incomes of older people. The payment will be made through the winter fuel payment process. The Bill also provides the power to make regulations under the affirmative procedure to enable other targeted payments to people aged over 60 to be made in the future if circumstances warrant such payments.
The Bill has attracted broad support from all parts of the House and a number of hon. Members have made valuable contributions to its scrutiny. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) tabled a series of probing amendments that allowed us to explore, at some length, the detail of how the payment will be made. That has left us all much wiser, particularly in relation to polygamous marriages, among other things—a subject that provoked some interest in Committee. I also thank the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) for his scrutiny.
The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) has argued eloquently throughout our deliberations that the payment should be both universal and uniform. We, in turn, have explained why it will not and, further, why it cannot be.My hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) and for Watford (Claire Ward) all made timely and constructive contributions to the debates in Committee.On Report, we had a useful run-through of some of the issues. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) made significant contributions.
Although I am happy to reply to any new point that might arise during the debate on Third Reading, I now simply commend the Bill to the House, as it paves the way for us to give financial support to our oldest and some of our most vulnerable pensioners.
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
I will not detain the House for long. Many hon. Members wish to speak on airports and air transport, and I must be back in Committee at 2.30 pm to hear the Minister who is dealing with the Finance Bill answer the point that I made just before the break.
As we have made clear from the beginning, we support the Bill. It is difficult not to support helping elderly people to cope with the very high council tax increases imposed on them by the Government. However, it is a strange Bill because the Government never intended to introduce it in the first place, but also because although it is intended to help people to pay council tax bills, the payment will go to people who do not pay council tax. It is also strange because it will do nothing to address the problem that the Government claim they seek to address: soaring council tax bills. It is worth reminding people, before Thursday, that those bills have gone up by 69 per cent. since 1997, or the equivalent to 3p on the basic rate of income tax.
The Bill does nothing to address the fundamental problems with the council tax—that work will have to wait. With my good friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), I met the Minister for Local and Regional Government yesterday to discuss the 8.4 per cent. increase in Macclesfield borough council's council tax. It is clear that a range of centrally imposed burdens has caused council tax to increase, but the Bill does nothing to deal with that.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for using his lunchtime break from Committee to participate in the debate in the Chamber. As a thoughtful man, has he reflected on why the Government need the Bill? Why did they not simply change the rate of the winter fuel payment at the age of 70?
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
To be honest, I have had little time for reflection today and I had not considered that. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will elaborate—as long as he does not take 30 minutes to do so.
The measure is necessary because, as the Chancellor admitted in his Budget statement, pensioners on fixed incomes and the many who are on incomes that are linked to prices have a problem paying council tax bills that increase much faster than prices. The Bill does little or nothing to address that problem. That said, however, we shall not oppose it. A lasting solution to some of the problems will probably have to await a Conservative Government.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
This is the Bill that happened by accident. The Chancellor came up with a proposal not realising that he needed a Bill to implement it, as we have just heard. The Bill is wholly unamended from Second Reading, so, in the interests of consistency, I shall not encourage my colleagues to vote differently from the way in which they voted then.
The Bill raises a fundamental question. Let us suppose that the Government are right and that we need to deliver £100 to everyone over 70. In that case, why did they not use the existing winter fuel payments mechanism and simply change the rate at the age of 70? I shall be happy to give way to the Minister if he wishes to explain why the Bill is needed, when all it does is replicate the winter fuel payments delivery mechanism. The Government could have increased the winter fuel payment at 70, and the Chancellor could have said that people could spend the money on their council tax if they wanted to. Why did the Government not do that? Presumably, they did not do that because it would have blown the gaff—it would have been an admission that winter fuel payments are nothing to do with winter fuel, just as the age-related payments in the Bill are nothing to do with council tax. Even if we allow that what the Government want to do is correct, why is the Bill needed?
Obviously, without the Bill we would not have been able to scrutinise the measure as we have, but the Government's approach shows a degree of inconsistency. Our greatest concern about the measure is less the money that is paid than the money that might be paid with negligible scrutiny. The Division that we have just had focused on that specific issue. We do not want the Bill to set a precedent. We do not want Bills such as this one to appear in future—Bills that not only enable the Government to do what they want in a panic, but give them sweeping powers to do similar things in future with even less scrutiny. I hope that the Government hear the message loud and clear: although they won the Division, neither this House nor the other place will tolerate Governments giving themselves such sweeping powers in future. I hope that Ministers in other Departments, who no doubt hang on every word of our debates, also take that message to heart.
The most interesting point to emerge from our discussions was made by the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) in his valuable contribution this afternoon. He said that Governments need powers to do things in a hurry—I think that that is a fair reflection of what he said. There is a saying: "Legislate in haste, repent at leisure". Our concern is that Governments acting in a hurry because they have got themselves into a mess set a dangerous precedent. To be fair, the hon. Gentleman suggested how that problem might be dealt with, but when the living standards of many of our most elderly and vulnerable citizens have been allowed to be severely damaged by an unfair local tax system and a local tax rebate system that does not work, and the Government's reaction is to invent a new scheme to tackle the problem because "something must be done", that is a dreadful approach to legislating.
The roots of the problem are two things that do not work. We have a local tax system that is unfair because it is not properly related to ability to pay, and a local tax rebate system that fails woefully to reach the people whom it needs to reach. If both those problems were resolved, the Bill would not be needed. If local tax reflected ability to pay, the Bill would be unnecessary because people over 70 would not be subject to an unfair burden. Failing that, if the rebate system worked as it should, the Bill would be unnecessary because poor people over 70 would not be paying. The Bill is needed because there are people aged over 70 who are poor and who are not getting the rebates to which they are probably entitled, but rather than make that system work, the Government invent another system that will, no doubt, cost millions of pounds to administer.
The Bill is an admission of failure—an admission that we have an unfair local tax system and that the rebate system designed to deal with that does not work. It introduces yet another scheme, one that will last one year. That raises another question: why is the measure to last for only one year? What are we waiting for? Surely, the local tax system will still be unfair and the rebates will still not reach the people who are supposed to get them the year after, so what is coming down the track? We hope that it is a fair local tax system, but we have seen no indication that that is what we will get.
This is a real sticking-plaster Bill. It is a response to two separate failures of Government—the failure to introduce a fair local tax system and the failure to introduce a fair rebate system. What makes the position worse is that there is a third failure of Government: their failure to support pensioners properly. If pensioners had a decent income in the first place, they would be able to afford to pay council tax. It is because so many pensioners over 70 do not have an adequate income—in seven years in office, the Government have failed to deliver one—that the Bill is needed. The Bill could almost be called the triple admission of failure Bill—failure to deliver a fair local tax system, failure to deliver an effective rebate system and, crucially, failure to ensure that our oldest and most vulnerable citizens have a decent income.
This is a sad day. Obviously, we will nod the Bill through because none of us will deny our elderly and vulnerable citizens £100, but would it not have been a better world if the Bill had not been necessary and the Government had not failed time and again on key policies?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I do not intend to detain the House for long. The debate is not about pensions policy as a whole, or about local government finance, although I note the interest of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) in that subject. I understand that he was a special advisor at No. 10 when the poll tax started to unravel—
George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)
The Minister is not going to tar me with that brush. I did work in No. 10, but long after the poll tax had disappeared.
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
I apologise if I got that wrong, but I note—as will the Hansard reporters—the use of the phrase "tar me with that brush". The poll tax is indeed not something of which to be proud. If that is the first apology that we have heard for the poll tax, I welcome it.
The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) asked why we did not simply use the winter fuel payments mechanism—in fact, he was urging us to use secondary legislation. To have to be consistent is a terrible thing, but being a Liberal Democrat means never having to be consistent. It must be wonderful, but those of us in serious politics have to point out such inconsistencies.
Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)
So why did the Minister not do it then?
Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)
There is a good answer to that question. The winter fuel payments system draws on the social fund that relates to cold weather payments, and it is a tribute to the Government that winter fuel payments are now at such a level that they meet a large proportion of people's winter fuel bills. Legally, therefore, that system would not have been an appropriate way to deliver the £100. In any case, this £100 is related not to winter fuel, but to council tax. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question.
The hon. Member for Northavon was not terribly generous about the fact that we are helping our elders and betters, and talked about the Government having a formidable track record. I plead guilty—we do have a track record, as we have reintroduced free sight tests for elderly people, which were abandoned by another Government in a mean-minded moment. We have a formidable track record of 3 million individuals now receiving pension credit; free television licences for the over-75s; and winter-fuel payments of £200, or £300 for households where someone is over 80. I therefore plead guilty to having a track record of which we are proud and which supports some of the most vulnerable people in the community. We will add to it with £100 for households where someone is 70 or over if Members support the Bill, which I commend to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.