Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to move Amendment 5, in my name, and to speak to the other amendments in this group. I tabled Amendments 5, 6 and 7 for two reasons: to try to plug what seems to be a serious knowledge gap in this legislation, and to highlight the wider concern about the growing rates of pensioner poverty and the worsening cost-of-living crisis It seems evident that the Bill must have an effect on pensioner poverty, because it will not only give today’s pensioners a lower pension next year than they expected but it will affect the value of the state pension for them and for future generations of pensioners for ever, as it is the base from which future percentage increases will take place. As noble Lords have already said today, that is a low base, since the UK pension is comparatively low The last Labour Government were able to achieve big reductions in pensioner poverty, in large part by introducing pension credit. At Second Reading I asked the Minister what action the Government would be taking to increase the take-up of pension credit, since at that point the last figures that I had seen suggested that only six in 10 of those eligible were claiming it. In response, the Minister picked just one figure and talked about take-up by value, and only for the guaranteed minimum standard pension credit. She did not talk about the aspect that most people talk about: the proportion of people who could claim pension credit who are actually doing so—in other words, take-up by volume I am sure the Minister will appreciate that that matters a great deal. With some benefits, if you only get a small amount then some people might choose not to claim. But the thing about pension credit is that if you get it at all, it is a passport to other really important benefits, including council tax credit, help with health and energy costs, and of course the free TV licence for the over-75s. It therefore matters that everyone gets pension credit if they are entitled to it I think the latest figures show that take-up for pension credit is still only 63%. Will the Minister confirm that? If so, what are the Government doing to boost it, including the leaflets mentioned by my noble friend Lady Lister? There were lots of other ideas—what is happening about those Since 2012 pensioner poverty has started rising again. Official figures show that some 18% of pensioners were living in poverty last year. That amounts to around 2.1 million poor pensioners, with over 1 million of those living in severe poverty. Has the Minister seen the report in June by Independent Age which found that people aged 85 and over have the highest rate of poverty among pensioners, at 22%? There are big regional variations; London has by far the highest rate of pensioner poverty, at 25%, but there are worries about rising poverty in the north In September, Age UK published research which found that, since 2012-13, the number of women pensioners living in poverty has increased from 990,000 to 1.25 million—an extra 260,000 women living in poverty. This is especially remarkable given that, because the state pension age was going up at that time, the actual number of female pensioners fell by 800,000. So we have 800,000 fewer female pensioners and yet 260,000 more female pensioners living in poverty. Can the Government explain that and tell us what they are doing about it? Age UK also found that older people from black and Asian communities are around twice as likely to be living in poverty as white pensioners.