Finance Bill

I think that once local authorities are confronted with 25 to 40% budget cuts later this year and we face, as Age UK has warned, the possible collapse of the social care system, we will see whether the freeze in council tax is truly delivered. Even towards the end of this Parliament, the hits to pensioners will just keep coming. The Library assesses that by 2013, pensioners could face cuts to disability living allowance benefits totalling an extraordinary £350 million a year. That is alongside cuts to housing benefit and the lower uprating of public service pensions and other benefits, which are now also linked to the lower-rising CPI rather than RPI. I accept that reforms to DLA are not yet clear, but we have to accept that Britain's pensioners face a new risk that has not yet been explained to this House. One million people of pension age are on DLA—they represent 34% of DLA recipients of all ages—so it is a risk that we in this House should demand we understand before changes are made.