My Lords, I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott on the Front Bench, and I have sat here thinking, “How did we come to this?”—a first-world country that could treat our pensioners so badly. How could we sit here and have a debate about taking away really needed money from the elderly and most vulnerable people in our communities? Today is quite a cold day; it suddenly went cold, and I am feeling it, and I am pretty certain that most pensioners in their households will be thinking, “Should I switch the heating on or leave it off?”
I speak on behalf of the 10,207 pensioners in the city of Leicester who are now not going to receive this payment. I feel sad, but also ashamed that we are standing here debating a very small saving in the bigger scheme of things. I do not understand it—I do not get it—because I felt that we were a country that looked after the most vulnerable. I felt that we were this gold standard that people looked at, and that we were able to say that we protect those who cannot protect themselves. Yet here we are, quite happy to debate £1.4 billion. I am not going to challenge the public sector workers’ pay award; I just want to focus long and hard on why we are sitting here thinking that we have no hope in changing the Government’s mind. If the Government really want to help, they need to take this ridiculous notion back and rethink. If the Government want to save £1.4 billion there are plenty of other ways of doing it, and I urge the Government to use them.