Social Security

The Conservatives support the uprating of benefits and pensions because we believe that anything that will help hard-pressed individuals and families at this incredibly difficult time for the United Kingdom is welcome. In these orders, the guaranteed minimum pension increases by 3 per cent.; incapacity benefit claimants with age additions receive an increase of 3.15 per cent.; the standard minimum guarantee element of pension credit increases by 4.8 per cent.; the basic state pension, carer's allowance, attendance allowance, disability living allowance, industrial injuries benefit, incapacity benefit and child benefit increase by 5 per cent.—by the increase in the RPI; and income-related benefits, including income support, jobseeker's allowance, employment and support allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit increase by 6.3 per cent. or by the Rossi index which is unusually, as the Minister has already told us, more than the RPI this year because housing costs have fallen. While most tax credits will increase by 5 per cent., the child element of the child tax credit is rising by 7 per cent. So we have six different percentage increases applied to more than 14 pages of different benefits, which is why I shall mention the issue of benefit complexity later. I suspect that it is the complexity of the subject that has meant that, in my recent experience, fewer and fewer Members attend this debate every year. If it is difficult for hon. Members who are meant to understand such things, how much more difficult must it be for our constituents, with their busy lives? We have already had some discussion about the rate of inflation for pensioners. They will no doubt be very pleased to get more than the 75p increase that they got from this Government a few years ago. However, is it appropriate to use the RPI to uprate pensions—a point made quite properly by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) a moment ago? I wonder whether he is aware that Capital Economics, a forecasting house, has calculated that the pensioners' inflation rate to December last year was actually 12.2 per cent. The question we really need to ask is how the indices are calculated and whether they are fit for purpose.