Social Security

This annual uprating debate is not the most striking example of the power of Parliament over the Executive. The order is not amendable, and unfortunately all we can do is take it or leave it. The Lib Dems were unwise to vote against it one year; they were then castigated for being against the increase in pensions. We should consider this situation. We would dearly like to suggest amendments to this order, which I shall come to later. I and, I suspect, every Labour Member congratulate the Government on their achievements in this area during the past 10 years. I regularly hold public meetings with pensioners and with Age Concern to tell them what is going on and to increase the uptake. I would like to make one plea on uptake. There is real resentment among pensioners about taking handouts, which runs very deeply for certain generations who have worked all their lives and never taken a handout. They see the pension credit and income support as handouts; they accept the entitlement of the basic pension because they have paid for that. That is a serious problem and it is a persistent one. It used to be the case that about an extra half a million people needed to claim income support to bring them up to the minimum income guarantee level, but we now hear that 1.7 million do not claim pension credit. I appeal to the Minister to find a better way to deal with the issue than the take-up campaign. We have had dozens of those in the past, and none of them has been very successful. Surely there must be some way the Department can delve into the records to identify those who are entitled to pension credit and more income support. It can then write to them and tell them, ““There is a very large sum of money to which you are entitled, and it's waiting for you.””