Pensions Bill

As a very humble, new Back Bencher, may I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright)? The work that Members from all parties have done on this issue since I came here on 5 May 2005 has impressed me enormously. I personally praise the work of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) throughout the campaign. The issue was brought to my attention when I was a parliamentary candidate in Hemel Hempstead some six years ago. Just after I was selected, the former Dexion workers committee came to see me. They asked me to read their file—it was about 6 in deep—and give them my opinion on whether they had been treated fairly and with dignity, whether natural justice had been done and whether trust in Parliament and pension schemes could ever be restored. I read every word, and when I went back to the committee I was tested. They did not trust me: they did not trust any politician. I do not think that they do today. They wanted to know whether I had read and understood the file, and whether I agreed with them that no matter who was in power, or who had made the mistakes, they had been treated appallingly. At the time, there were just over 700 of them, mostly men, but some ladies, who had paid into a scheme, at one stage, compulsorily. Following legislation, membership of the scheme was voluntary, but nobody left it because it was very good. Some people had paid in for 35 years and more. The campaigners had huge dignity, but they had already been around the country taking their clothes off in public. They were middle-aged men and women who had worked all their lives, done the decent thing and did not want to scrounge off the state. They did not want means-tested benefits. They wanted to work until their time for retirement came and to pay in a fair amount of money to be kept safe for them, and for their loved ones when their time came to pass on. I told the campaigners that they desperately needed to put their case before the parliamentary ombudsman—the place for justice in the mother of all Parliaments. I fought hard—and it is hard for a parliamentary candidate—to get the ombudsman to listen to their case. I went to Front-Bench colleagues and asked them to read the file, but they said that they had seen the same thing happen to other schemes and that it should go to the ombudsman. The ombudsman decided that the pensioners had been misled under both this Government and the previous Conservative Government, and maladministration had taken place. Like many hon. Members, I was over the moon at that decision. I cracked a bottle of John Smith’s with the Dexion pensioners—I am not a champagne man—and we celebrated. That did not last long. They thought that the ombudsman had ruled and that the Government would adhere to the ruling. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase said, it is not for the ombudsman to decide what should actually happen, especially in a scheme set up 40 years ago, but it is for her to have unrestricted access to the facts and to come to a decision as to whether our constituents had been let down by the system, Parliament and the Government of the day. I have just met some of the campaigners, and I apologise for not being present for the whole debate. They still do not understand why the Government did not accept the ombudsman’s decision. They have come so far. It is as though a velvet revolution has taken place. The hon. Gentleman said that when he first looked at the issue, he thought that such things happen in a market system, but a groundswell of opinion, led by many Labour Members and others—I have pushed it hard myself since coming here—has convinced my Front-Bench colleagues, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and Ministers. People who told me 18 months ago that they would never support a scheme under which the Government would compensate those who lost out, because it was not the Government’s fault, have now decided—rightly, in my opinion—that they do need help. This is not about party politics, as the Minister has joined me in meeting delegations of widows. I shall say more about the widows in a moment, but the Secretary of State, only days after taking up his post, also met a delegation that I brought to him. I passionately believe that the Department for Work and Pensions wants to settle this matter once and for all. None of us has any doubt about that, so why on earth can it not be resolved today? The Minister has made another move in our direction, and the Treasury seems to have come up with some extra money so that he can compensate the 8,000 people who are not covered by present schemes. We may not know where the money has come from, but we know that it is available. In the greater scheme of things, the sum involved is, frankly, peanuts. I am proud to be a member of the Health Select Committee, and we know that Government spending on the NHS now totals £100 billion. Where it goes is another question, but that is a huge amount. In contrast, we are talking about only £30 million a year to compensate the people who have lost out. That sum is expected to rise to around £100 million, and then fall again. I share the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase. I do not understand why my party’s Front-Bench spokesmen do not agree with the proposal. I have said that to them in private, and now I do so in public. We are talking about only 30 million quid, so we should make it available today. The lifeboat scheme that we have come up with has been prepared with the help of hon. Members of all parties. I hope that we will be able to vote on it later, because it will provide immediate help for the people who need it. They need that help today, not in six months or a year. Those who are in trouble cannot wait until the next Pension Bill, about which my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) spoke earlier, because many of them are dying. Of course, some are dying of old age or illness, but most are not the sort that we would expect to die early. The fact is that stress-related problems are leading to many deaths among those who need help. I am sure that hon. Members of all parties are aware of the disproportionate levels of strokes and heart attacks suffered by the people who need our help. They are stressed out beyond belief, and that is because they are honourable people whose personal dignity means that they do not want to rely on means-tested benefits or charitable hand-outs. They worked all their lives and paid for their pensions, and they want to retire with dignity. Even so, many of them have taken up jobs that most hon. Members would refuse.