Pensions Bill

I thank the Minister. He is known colloquially—I think that one of his friends has said it—as the Minister for Grandparents, so I know how much he has taken to heart the plight particularly of those grandparents who are at the extreme end of pressured, dysfunctional families, where the parents are unable to take care of their children. If anybody can fight to help to improve their situation, I am sure that it will be my noble friend. I accept his points about the technical difficulties of the amendment. I accept that transferring across is not straightforward, which is why—I am sorry if I sound like a gramophone record—we really need Amendment No. 4, which would address the problem. If we cannot agree to Amendment No. 4, we shall have to find some other way and keep going after pockets of individuals with tailored solutions. I disagree with the Minister’s suggestion that we might appreciate that we have in place ““effective coverage for grandparents””. No, we do not. What we have—I welcome my noble friend’s remarks on it—is greater protection and support where either the grandchild or their parent is disabled. My noble friend’s comments in that regard were very helpful. However, where a grandparent is engaged in steadfast caring for a child—I am talking about20 hours a week or more on a regular basis—in, let us say, a rural community, where one is unlikely to be able to find alternative commercial care for a two year-old, I do not understand the distinction between caring and looking after. When I looked after my two year-old, I was caring and looking after at the same time. It is not a valid distinction. We are talking about somebody whose hours of committed, reliable caring are such that they take that grandparent out of the labour force to enable the daughter to be in it. At that point, the grandparent loses their income, because they are not receiving child care tax credit—that is perhaps a battle to be fought on another day—and their pension rights as well. I am afraid that nothing that my noble friend has said today gives me comfort on that front. He asked for some way of checking. We currently have a child care tax credit, which is a high-value payment, being worth £150 or more, and there is a fairly flaky audit trail on to whom it is being paid. Whatever system we have for that can certainly apply perfectly well for someone who is seeking merely to acquire a pension credit as opposed to an income payment. A district health visitor could make an occasional check while on a call that they would probably make at any rate on a two year-old at home. A GP could authorise it in a similar way. There are plenty of people who interface with the lives of those children, their parents and their grandparents if an audit trail is needed. If a parent, particularly a lone parent, is in work full time and has a child under 12, especially a child under five, we know that someone has to look after it. If the parent is not claiming child care tax credit, it almost certainly means that the primary carer is the grandparent or a family relative. If it was anybody else, they would be able to claim child care tax credit. Ergo, there is a grandparent involved; ergo, somebody is failing to achieve the protection that they would get through entitlement to a basic state pension if they were in the labour market. The problem that the Minister identified does not exist.