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Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman's answer is that what he has said is not a guarantee.
Mr. Meacher : It is a guarantee that all those whose normal pay is at that level will not have to pay more. To speak about tiny discrepancies is an insult to the people when the Government have increased taxation from 34 to 37 per cent. for the average person. I have spelt out our position and shall now look briefly at that of the Government. By breaking the pension link with earnings, the Secretary of State for Social Security and his predecessors have made the single pensioner about £14 a week worse off and the married couple £23 a week worse off than they would have been under the policies that existed in 1979. Having done that to the pensioners, the right hon. Gentleman proposes to continue to reduce even further their share of average living standards year by year.
It is not that the Secretary of State and the Government do not have a choice. There is persistent talk of 1p off income tax in the Budget, or perhaps an increase in personal allowances by double the rate of inflation. Clearly, there is leeway of about £2 billion in the Budget. That is enough to increase the pension for a single person by about £3.50 a week and for a married couple by about £5.50 a week, together with all the linked benefits. Why is not the right hon. Gentleman demanding that his colleagues should help the pensioners for once? Why is he such a pushover when it comes to defending the 17 million people who depend on benefits? The Secretary of State is silent. We have grown used to his silences, which sometimes last for months on end. They speak volumes. Even after slapping pensioners round the face year after year throughout the past decade, the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, even at this time, prefer tax cuts for their friends in the upper income groups rather than the tiniest measure of justice for pensioners. Mr. Simon Burns (Chelmsford) rose--
Mr. Meacher : I hope that the hon. Gentleman has a relevant comment.
Mr. Burns : Between the hon. Gentleman's flights of hyperbole, which make him sound more and more like a cold war warrior when the cold war has ended, will he remind the House that between 1979 and 1988 pensioners' incomes rose by 33 per cent. in real terms above inflation?
Mr. Meacher : I shall be glad to put it on record, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take note of it, that the 2 million poorest pensioners, who do not have any other income, have had an increase in pension in real terms since 1979 of between 0 per cent. and 2 per cent. Under the last Labour Government, who were in office for five years, the increase was 20 per cent. The hon. Gentleman referred to a 33 per cent. increase. There is one major reason for that
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--the state-earnings related pension scheme which Labour introduced. In 1979 it was worth about 50p a week. For the average pensioner retiring this year on average earnings it is worth £40.80 per week. Pensioners have done better because of Labour's action on pensions, which the Secretary of State's predecessor tried to abolish. What is the Prime Minister's position? He likes to proclaim the classless society--I think that he describes it as a nation at ease with itself--yet he has produced the most class-divided society since the war, a nation more riven by depression, anxiety and fear than at any time for a decade. It gives me no pride to say that for the first time since the war more than 10 million people, or more than one in six of the population, are living at or below the income support level. That is more even than when unemployment was last at its peak in 1986.While the Prime Minister in his so-called classless society always travels first class, the 10 million at the bottom are deprived even--if I may coin a phrase--of the "cheap and cheerful" class. Not only are there more of them than before, but the poverty level standard on which they are forced to live is at a record low. It is less than £40 a week for an adult over 25. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman, who gets more than £1,000 a week, should try living on £40 for a week. If Ministers had to experience that in practice, it would not stay at that level for long.
Faced with those figures by David Frost last Sunday, what was the Prime Minister's response? It was to wriggle and to fiddle. He said :
"Now we have raised those income support levels far above the amount that one would need to raise them simply to keep pace with inflation, so in essence we have brought into the statistics people who otherwise would have been beyond those statistics. So there is an artificiality in the figures."
I have news for the Prime Minister. The only artificiality in the official figures is that they are lower than the reality because every year for the last eight years the Government have cut income support and supplementary benefit in relation to average earnings. Since 1979, the Government have cut the relative value of the benefits by a quarter. That really matters when a person receives less than £40 a week. Because those on income support have now been deprived of single payments and have to pay 100 per cent. water rates and 20 per cent. poll tax, income support has not even kept up with inflation. If the Prime Minister would put only half the ingenuity that he devotes to misrepresenting the truth into dealing with the problem, we might make progress in reducing the poverty which he has played such a big part in creating.
The Prime Minister has a record as long as one's arm. He tells us about his humble origins about as often as the Chancellor tells us that the recession is ending. But that did not stop him--when he had the power as a Minister at the Department of Social Security--cutting in half the relief on mortgage interest payments for the first 16 weeks for newly unemployed, or virtually abolishing disability benefit, sharply cutting the number of free school meals, or punitively extending the unemployment benefit disqualification rules from 16 to 26 weeks and setting up the hated social fund ; I might add to that his refusal now of 75 per cent. of the applications made under it.
This is the same man who in 1988, together with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, chopped £1 billion
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off the benefits for people on £40 a week, at the same time as the Chancellor handed £2 billion in tax cuts to higher rate taxpayers. Surely there cannot be a clearer demonstration of Tory contempt for those struggling on the lowest incomes.Perhaps, if the Prime Minister were here, he would say that as a junior Minister he was acting under orders. I understand that point. In that case, why has he done nothing, since becoming Prime Minister, to reverse the harsh legislation for which he was responsible? Why has he not even revoked the iniquitous 16-week mortgage interest disqualification rule which he personally introduced in the House in December 1986 and which, of course, is the root cause of thousands of repossessions?
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : Absolute nonsense.
Mr. Meacher : I suggest that the hon. Gentleman, who before the debate started was making a bogus point of order about disrupting proceedings, speaks to some of those whose houses have been repossessed about the effect that that has had on them.
Why has the Prime Minister left in place a Chancellor who has shown his personal contempt for the poor by saying that unemployment is a price well worth paying? Why has he done nothing to halt the human tide of despair among the 1 million people forced on to income support--not when the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) was Prime Minister, but since he became Prime Minister? The Prime Minister inherited a wilderness and he has simply presided over its getting worse. He spends more time running away from elections than facing up to fundamental issues.
Our social security system is probably the worst in the EC, with the possible exception of those in Greece, Spain and Portugal. It is getting steadily worse by the year. [Hon. Members :-- "Rubbish."] It is not rubbish ; it is a fact. If hon. Members looked at the figures of comparative benefit, they would understand the point which I am making.
British pensions, British child benefit and British disability benefits are all lower, and in many cases substantially lower, than those of all our main competitors. We have a Secretary of State for Social Security who is distinguished only by his invisibility, and who has done nothing to arrest the steady disintegration of the benefits system, the growing demoralisation of his staff in social security offices and the major dissatisfaction and anger of so many clients.
At least I was assured that the right hon. Gentleman still existed when, a week ago, he issued a press release attacking the Labour party over its national insurance plans. The only problem was that he contradicted the figures which he had given only a month ago by exaggerating them by no less than 50 per cent. Perhaps he should return to his hibernation.
We have a Government where the last resort of the scoundrel is to lie.
Mr. Arbuthnot rose --
Mr. Meacher : I am not giving way again. Other hon. Members wish to speak. The hon. Gentleman can make his own speech.
We have a Government who are making wild and unthruthful allegations against us about tax as they have no other resort left. Let us consider briefly their record on
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tax. Under the Tories, taxation has gone up from 34 per cent. to 37 per cent. Theirs is not a tax-cutting party but a tax-raising party. The Government say that they will cut income tax and increase public expenditure. That means that they will have to put up VAT which, as the latest edition of "Social Trends" out yesterday shows, hits poorer families much harder than richer families. Of course, the Tories say that they have no plans to increase VAT. They said that in 1978 and in 1987. On both occasions, they promptly increased it directly after the elections. We cannot trust the Tories on VAT. It was the Tories who introduced VAT ; it was the Tories who doubled it. Labour cut it from 10 per cent. to 8 per cent. in 1974.The Labour party believes in fair taxation, justice and the right of participation for all our citizens, including the poorest. Because the Tories have shown by their record that they manifestly believe in neither, the issue which we are debating today will play a major part in removing them soon from power.
4.59 pm
The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton) : I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof :
warmly endorses the Government's policies for focusing considerable extra help on the most vulnerable in society ; welcomes the further real increases in benefits shortly to take place for many older less well off pensioners and hundreds of thousands of disabled people ; notes the Social Security Select Committee's conclusion that real disposable incomes grew by 30 per cent. between 1979 and 1988 with increases in real income being seen at all levels of the income scale ; believes that policies which provide more choice and greater opportunities are the best way of helping people to create a better life for themselves and their families ; and recognises that, if implemented, Her Majesty's Opposition's confused tax and spending plans would impoverish the whole nation, increase unemployment and destroy opportunities.'.
In the light of one or two observations that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) made about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I shall begin with an observation that I had not intended to make : that I have not the slightest doubt that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would not make the remark about orders that the hon. Member for Oldham, West suggested. What I do know is that, when challenged on his record when he was a Social Security Minister, the hon. Gentleman was heard to mutter that of course he was a junior Minister and had to do what he was told.
Mr. Meacher : Since the right hon. Gentleman has made that allegation, I totally and absolutely refute it and ask him to provide the evidence, or else to withdraw it.
Mr. Newton : I heard the hon. Gentleman mutter that when I made the point across the Dispatch Box in the last debate that we had on this subject. If the hon. Gentleman assures me that my recollection or my hearing was wrong, then of course I accept that unequivocally. I simply say that he had no business to make that suggestion about the Prime Minister. I remind him that he was a Minister in the old Department of Health and Social Security when the Christmas bonus was not paid for two years running --so much for his concern for the pensioners--and when Labour failed to carry out its own obligation--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. There is too much body language.
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Mr. Newton : --in respect of the uprating of benefits.
The hon. Gentleman's approach to these matters can best be illustrated by looking at a number of his recent texts. When I saw the figure of 10 million people living in poverty in the motion that he tabled, I found that I could not reconcile it with a number of other figures that the hon. Gentleman had used. I did some research and found that in "Meet the Challenge, Make the Change : A new Agenda for Britain" of June 1989 we were told that the numbers living in poverty had grown from 11 million to over 15 million. Later, in September 1991, we were told that over 11 people were living in poverty. When the hon. Gentleman wrote to the Prime Minister in November 1991 the figure had come down to just over 9.5 million. In a press release that he issued on 17 December, less than a month later, the figure rose again to nearly 15 million. Today it has come down to 10 million.
It is tempting for me to draw from that wild variation the conclusion that, on Labour's own figures, the Government have reduced poverty by a third in a month. I shall refrain from doing so, however, and will simply wonder--no doubt in common with several of his right hon. and hon. Friends--just what it is that the hon. Gentleman thinks he is doing.
Mr. Meacher : If one takes account of the extra passported benefits associated with income support, one comes to a substantially higher figure than if one simply counts the heads of household claiming income support. If one takes into account only heads of household, which is what I did, the number stands at over 8.3 million. If one then takes into account what the National Audit Office said in its House of Commons paper 451--that 1.8 million who are living below the threshold are not claiming income support- -one finds that the figure comes to just over 10 million. That is a shocking figure. It is the highest figure that we have ever had.
Mr. Newton : It is lower than the figure that the document I first quoted gave for 1979, which was 11 million. The hon. Gentleman appears to use whatever figures he thinks will have most impact in whatever press release he decides to issue in a particular week. Only one thing is absolutely clear : that, whatever else these figures do, they do not provide a sensible measure of poverty. They are constructed, apparently, in two different ways, both of which lead the hon. Gentleman, in the conclusions that he then seeks to draw, into manifest and palpable absurdity.
The first of these methods, upon which the hon. Gentleman touched earlier, is to take as the number in poverty the number of people at or below the income support rate and, as he said, sometimes to add in those who are a little above it. I leave aside the fact that the last Labour Government--I believe at the time when the hon. Gentleman was a Minister--declined to accept that sort of definition of a poverty line, just as much as the present Government have declined to accept it. I would simply make the point that, according to this "Alice in Wonderland" approach to measuring poverty, every real increase in the income support rates, which by definition makes people better off, produces in the hon. Gentleman's world an increase in the amount of poverty.
In April, when the 7 per cent. rise in income support generally and the further real increase in the higher pensioners' premium will give new income support
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entitlement to about 500,000 people, most of them pensioners, making them better off, the hon. Gentleman will presumably be running round the country saying that poverty has increased from 10 million to 10.5 million. Incidentally, the converse is true--that a reduction in income support rates, which makes all those involved worse off, would show up in his kind of figuring as a reduction in poverty. It is utterly and totally ridiculous.If anything, it gets worse. The second of the hon. Gentleman's methods for measuring what he calls poverty--I suspect that this is the real reason for some of the confused figures to which I referred a few moments ago--is to make reference to average incomes and then to say that everybody with less than half the average is to be designated a pauper.
The result, especially when average incomes are rising, as they have been under this Government, is once again to pretend that people who are getting better off are becoming poor, simply because the increase in their incomes is less than the average. Once again it is absurd, although here, too, there is an obvious converse : that we could make everyone in the country worse off, and, so long as we reduced the average by hitting the better-off hardest, a lot of people further down the scale would allegedly cease to be poor, even as their incomes fell.
One can see the relevance of that. This is a very attractive proposition for a Labour Government. At one and the same time, they could reduce the standard of living of everybody in the country and claim that they were reducing poverty. No doubt that is what the hon. Gentleman has in mind. There could be no clearer indication from the way in which the hon. Gentleman uses these figures that what he is really talking about--and, frankly, what he is really interested in--is not poverty but equality, an entirely separate matter.
So much for the hon. Gentleman's figures. I am interested in helping people to become better off. Therefore, I prefer to rest on the simple, clear and accurate conclusion of the Social Security Select Committee in its report on low-income statistics. I am happy to see that its Chairman, the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), is in the Chamber today. The report said :
"Real disposable incomes grew by more than 30 per cent. between 1979 and 1988, with increases in real income being seen at all levels of the income scale."
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead) : Will the right hon. Gentleman also quote the distribution figures for those at the bottom, those on average and those on higher incomes, which may be disguised by just putting across that average figure?
Mr. Newton : I implied that there have been changes in the distribution of income and the speed with which incomes have changed. That is not the same as the systematic attempt by the hon. Member for Oldham, West to pretend that large numbers of people have been getting better off, which the Select Committee rightly refuted.
Mr. Field : Will the right hon. Gentleman now say that he endorses the finding of the Select Committee that those who gained the smallest increase under this Government's stewardship were the poorest?
Mr. Newton : What I shall certainly endorse is that, in recent years, and certainly in the period since I have been
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Secretary of State, we have steadily-- uprating by uprating--steered additional resources to poorer pensions and to others whom we had identified, as a result of our research, as among those who were not doing as well as we should have wished.Mr. Field : I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but may I ask him that question again? He has quoted the Select Committee report. Does he endorse the whole of that report, which shows that the very poorest have gained the smallest increase under this Government?
Mr. Newton : I accept that there are variations in the way in which incomes have grown-- [Hon. Members :-- "Answer."]--at different levels of the income distribution. I am going no further than that-- [Hon. Members :-- "Oh."]--because, apart from anything else, the hon. Member for Birkenhead, to whom I give credit for taking a genuine and serious interest in such matters--
Mr. Newton : He will recognise that, apart from anything else, the composition of different deciles and quartiles in those distribution figures is not necessarily the same at the end of the period as it was at the beginning. A whole range of extremely complicated factors are involved. If the hon. Gentleman will accept that, I shall move on.
Mr. Field : I accept that fully, but some of those in the lowest decile remained in the lowest decile throughout the Government's entire period in office. Will the right hon. Gentleman now come to the Dispatch Box to say that, under the stewardship of this Government, the poorest people in this country have had the smallest increase?
Mr. Newton : I do not think that there is any basis in the hon. Gentleman's report for that suggestion-- [Interruption.] What I am saying--I think that he will accept this, because his own report makes the point--is that, at all levels of the income distribution, people have been getting better off during the lifetime of this Government.
Mr. Meacher : The Select Committee has, of course, produced its own account, but does the right hon. Gentleman accept that one of his written answers last July showed that, after housing costs, all those in the bottom 10 per cent. of the income distribution--the poorest tenth--were worse off by an average of 6 per cent., and that, according to the Government's own figures, those in the lowest percentile--more than half a million people-- were worse off by more than 22 per cent.?
Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman is taking us into an area which, as I think he knows, is the point at which the Select Committee and, perhaps even more importantly, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has accepted that the samples from which those figures are drawn do not allow that sort of conclusion to be drawn with the certainty with which the hon. Gentleman is pretending that it can.
In addition--this is the point that the hon. Gentleman so often misses when talking about benefit rates--calculations that consider people's incomes after housing costs are artificial when compared with the way in which almost everybody regards their income. Furthermore, when he talks about people living on £40 a week, he is entirely overlooking the fact that, if they are householders, their housing costs will be met 100 per cent. either through
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rent or through the payment of their mortgage interest. When compared with the rest of the population, we are talking about significantly greater sums being represented by the benefit rates, as the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well.I prefer also to look at the clear practical evidence of the improvement that has been taking place for the groups that all hon. Members would regard as the people we particularly wish to help--the pensioners, disabled people and low-income families with children. An important point has already been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns)--
Ms. Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) rose --
Mr. Newton : No, in deference to what Mr. Speaker said earlier, I shall not give way again, because I wish to make progress. Pensioners' average net incomes grew by more than a third between 1979 and 1988. That income growth is certainly not less than was enjoyed by the rest of the population : indeed, it is probably marginally greater. Furthermore, it is not wholly or largely because of the state earnings-related pension scheme ; it is due even more to the growth in savings incomes, which have more than doubled during the lifetime of this Government, but which fell in real terms under the last Labour Government. That increase in pensioners' average net incomes is also due to the increase in incomes from occupational pensions.
Mr. Arbuthnot : What does my right hon. Friend think would happen to the savings income if a massive tax were imposed on it, as has been suggested by the Labour party?
Mr. Newton : The most notable massive tax that Labour Governments have traditionally imposed on savings incomes is the one that caused the problems under the last Labour Government and led to a fall in the real value of savings incomes. It is the tax that is imposed by the rampant inflation with which Labour Governments have always been associated.
I turn now to disabled people. The hon. Member for Oldham, West made some narrow references to the industrial injuries scheme, which is a very limited part of the benefits for disabled people. When the hon. Gentleman studies what he actually said--I am not sure whether it was what he meant-- I am sure that he will agree that his remarks were totally and utterly misleading.
The fact is that expenditure on benefits for disabled people has increased by more than 150 per cent. in real terms under the present Government. The number of people receiving mobility allowance has risen from fewer than 100,000 to more than 600,000. The number of people receiving attendance allowance has risen from about 250,000 to well over 750,000. In addition, the number of people receiving invalid care allowance has risen from 5,000 to 150,000--[ Hon. Members :-- "Those are just numbers."] It is all very well to say that those are just numbers but, as I said at the outset, I am interested in trying to help people who need help to be better off.
Even allowing for a measure of overlap of people receiving both attendance allowance and mobility allowance, in my judgment there is no way in which those figures could mean less than the fact that 1 million disabled people, who were not getting those benefits when the
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present Government took office, now have a significantly higher standard of living as a result of what has transpired while this Government have been in office.Mr. Dennis Turner (Wolverhampton, South-East) : How can the Secretary of State say that he is interested in helping people when his Government have increased VAT from 8 per cent. to 17.5 per cent. while they have been in office? What has been the effect of that? Will he tell us the real problems that that increase and imposition have presented to elderly and sick people? Tell us its impact on people in poverty.
Mr. Newton : The rates of taxation--whether indirect or direct--are taken into account when calculating the figures about which I had exchanges with the hon. Member for Birkenhead a few moments ago. The plain fact remains that the Select Committee concluded that real incomes have been rising right across the income band
Ms. Gordon rose --
Mr. Newton : No, I shall not give way again for a moment. Apart from what has already been achieved in respect of the incomes of pensioners generally and in terms of directing additional help towards the less-well- off pensioners, which we have been doing consistently now for several years, and quite apart from the consistent improvements in the range and coverage of benefits for disabled people, we are now building on all that with the steps that we took at the time of the uprating in April.
The further real increase in income support premiums for older and more disabled pensioners, the introduction of new disability benefits--I stress that they are new disability benefits--which will give real extra help of at least £11.55 per week to about 300,000 disabled people over and above the numbers that I have given previously for what has happened in the past 10 to 12 years, and the changes in family credit to which, in the interests of keeping my speech brief, I have not referred will all enhance both the opportunities and the incomes of several tens of thousands of low- income families with children.
Even if the allegations that the hon. Member for Oldham, West has made about the scale of poverty could be made to run, and even if his proposed remedies were thought to be the right ones--on at least one occasion his hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead has suggested that he has some doubts about that--the plainly observable fact is that the policies of the hon. Gentleman and his party simply do not add up. A glaring gap in our debate so far has been that the hon. Gentleman has not sought to deal with that point, although this is the second time that it has happened within a year.
Last March, we had the mini-shambles of the so-called "shadow Budget" which, if I remember rightly, did not even mention the so-called "priority" of retirement pensions. It contained what the hon. Gentleman described as a "carefully costed" proposal on child benefit which would have given money to every family except the least well-off-- [Interruption.] -- despite the fact that the document claimed that Labour's plans would give most help to low-income households. Just as that embarrassment might have been thought to be behind them, we have had the macro-shambles of what has happened in the past month.
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First of all, there were the newspaper reports that other members of the shadow Cabinet were deeply frustrated with the way in which, true to form, the hon. Member for Oldham, West hijacked any extra cash that might be squeezed out of the taxpayer--to put it as the press reported it.Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax) : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Newton : I am not giving way for the moment.
Those newspaper reports left me with a sense of deja vu. They reminded me of a report in The Guardian of 19 July 1986 under the heading "Labour clash on Meacher shopping list' ". It said that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), now the deputy leader of the Labour party, and the hon. Member for Oldham, West were
"in serious dispute last night about election promises on public expenditure".
There were some interesting bits in the report, which could have been re- run by The Guardian in the past week or two.
The self-same deputy leader of the Labour party said in the article :
"Committing the party to doing specific things, at a specific cost, at specific times, will not improve our electoral prospects." The article also said :
"In particular, the failure to spell out in detail new tax and insurance rates for higher earners is thought by Mr. Hattersley and some other colleagues to be a propaganda gift to the Government." All that I can say is that the attempt to spell them out has been an even bigger propaganda gift to the Government in the past few weeks.
Mrs. Mahon : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Newton : Then, after that little flurry, we had the leader of the Labour party himself, no less, writing his new year letter to tens of thousands of households--I am not even sure that the figure given was not a million. I have the letter here. In it he promised, as indeed the hon. Member for Oldham, West attempted to do this afternoon :
"anyone earning less than £21,000 annually will not pay a penny extra in income tax or in national insurance".
That is simply not true, and I think that the hon. Member for Oldham, West knows it--and even acknowledged it in his speech. He chose to wave it away by saying that it would be only a few tens or hundreds.
A great many more people than that will pay more. Anyone who receives regular payments for commission or bonuses or who does substantial amounts of overtime will be significantly hit by the plans that the hon. Gentleman espouses and reiterated this afternoon. If he intends to continue espousing those plans, he had better drop that guarantee, because it is simply not true.
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) : On specific costs and promises, I wonder whether the Secretary of State could tell us what are his Government's specific promises--should they ever win the next election- -in respect of pensions, child benefit and disability benefits? Is the right hon. Gentleman still holding to the position that those will all be increased in line with inflation?
Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman knows that, at this very moment, our commitments are those which we will
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implement in the April uprating. Of course, our general policies for the future will be set out when the time comes in a manifesto for the electorate. But I can tell the hon. Gentleman now, because we have made it clear on each and every front in recent weeks. We have made it clear that child benefit will be uprated in line with inflation. We have made it clear, despite repeated attempts by the hon. Member for Oldham, West to suggest otherwise, that we remain absolutely committed to the retirement pension and to protecting it against increases in prices. The hon. Gentleman need not doubt our continued commitment to protecting the value of disability benefits such as those I have talked about this afternoon, at a time when, far from cutting support to disabled people, we are extending those benefits.Mr. Allen : I thank the Secretary of State for giving way again. I am pleased to hear his assurances that increases in all those benefits will be related to the rise in inflation. He will have read the survey published by, not the Labour party--our costings do not have a party political basis, unlike those of the Secretary of State--but Midland Montagu, a respected and one could hardly say pro-Labour organisation. It concluded that, if they were kept, the Secretary of State's promises would cost another £25 billion in public expenditure. How does the right hon. Gentleman intend to pay for it, if he is elected?
Mr. Newton : That is a nonsense point. The Government's commitments on price protection or other uprating conventions for social security benefits are allowed for in the Government's public expenditure plans.
Mr. Newton : Published, well known, well set out and beautifully presented plans.
The point about the commitments that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend make is that they are over and above the Government's carefully costed commitments. The hon. Gentleman cannot get out of the cost of his proposals unless he is prepared to tell me that he will go back on the commitments that we have made. He will not, will he?
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