Pensions and Social Security

I entirely take those points on board, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that the House will forgive my enthusiasm for the excellent work that is being done in my constituency. I will now confine my comments to the subject of the debate, but I beg your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker: I should like to respond to the comments made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) by touching slightly on the issue of the costs of heating a home. They are part of the cost of inflation, which obviously has something to do with the pension upratings. As the Minister has acknowledged, it is difficult to come up with a measure that truly reflects the costs of individual households. People with disabilities and pensioners will often be at home for many more hours in the day than other people, and will also need to keep their homes warmer, because as people age their bodies are less able to regulate temperature. That is a well-known fact. However, I feel that the efforts that the Government are making, and especially the move towards flat-rate pensions of £140 a week, will start to provide people with a reliable amount of income with which they will be able to afford to heat their homes. A huge problem at present is that people do not claim benefits that could make a real difference to them. Pensioners are the people who most need the benefits, but they are also least likely to claim them. That applies particularly to the group to whom the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan referred—people in their eighties. Theirs is a proud generation, a generation that has fought and lived through the war and we owe them a great deal. They are very stoic and very proud, and they find it difficult to apply for the benefits to which they are entitled. I think we all have an important job to do in speaking with one voice and saying to people of that generation that they have earned the right to claim those benefits. There should be no stigma, and we must make it as easy as possible for them to claim. I urge anybody who knows an older person whom they feel may be struggling to make sure they are claiming the benefits to which they are entitled. The Government have been doing a lot to simplify the application process and to make information more widely available, and there are also wonderful charities and organisations, including the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, that are doing just that. I am very proud to support the Government on these measures. There has long been great uncertainty about what will happen to the state pension. With the upratings and the triple lock, there is now certainty. There is a commitment to making the state pension the cornerstone of planning for retirement. As the Minister said, we cannot right the wrongs of the last decade in one fell swoop, especially as we are facing the most difficult financial situation in a generation, but the message that today's measures and commitment send out is that people can plan for the future as they can have confidence in respect of their pension. That is very important. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) rightly said that we should consider the upratings in a broader context. I had the great privilege of serving on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, and I think his description of the broader context of how we are supporting pensioners was not sufficiently generous. What is of most importance for pensioners and their families is both having enough income to live on and the safe knowledge that there will be an NHS for them when they need it. Elderly people are far and away the largest users of the NHS, and it is hugely helpful to them that this Government committed not to cut NHS expenditure—whereas the Labour party said it would do that, and would have done so in this Parliament. The fact that we are finally linking social care and the whole range of other services that elderly people and their families need to be able to have the quality of life and independence they want—