Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a matter of real regret that the Commons has not accepted the amendments to the Bill proposed by your Lordships’ House, but it is worth taking this opportunity to stress that not only have the Government broken a freely given promise to the electorate but, as has been clearly explained, they have done so totally unnecessarily. They could have lessened, if not avoided, the concern caused by breaking their promise by taking this opportunity to reaffirm clearly their commitment to the earnings element of the triple lock. It baffles me why they failed to do so I will not repeat all the arguments, despite the importance of the issue, but I have one more question for the Minister. The problem is that the Government are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they say they remain committed to all three elements of the triple lock—prices as measured by the CPI, average earnings and the 2.5% minimum. They want us to believe that this was an exceptional case that justified special rules being applied, and that they still deserve the electoral kudos that comes from standing by their promises. On the other hand, they have in practice made it clear that there are exceptional circumstances in which they can break the commitment We know they are prepared to break the triple lock, but we do not know under what conditions. We know what they were in this case; Ministers in this House and in the Commons have explained on several occasions the special circumstances which they believe applied. The noble Baroness the Minister said at Second Reading that "the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have caused distortions in the labour market, which have been reflected over two years in highly atypical trends in earnings growth."—[Official Report, 13/10/21; col. 1847.] We know the Government believe that highly atypical trends in earnings growth are sufficient justification for breaking the earnings link. We do not know how atypical earnings growth needs to be in future before they decide again to break the link. Can the Minister tell us more about what counts as atypical earnings growth? How atypical does it need to be to justify breaking the promise However, it is not just earnings growth that might be considered atypical. What counts as atypical growth in prices? This is not a hypothetical issue. Most of us here have become familiar with what many in this House might regard as consistently low rates of inflation, but who knows what is to come, with the unwinding of quantitative easing and other pressures on the economy? How do we know that the Government, when faced with a significantly higher rate of inflation than we have experienced in the last 25 years, will not decide that this too is atypical As I say, this is not hypothetical. Based on the OBR forecast for the Budget, it looks likely that the state pension increase in April 2023, which we will discuss next November, will be based on price increases rather than earnings or the fixed 2.5%. The latest Bank of England forecast, released earlier this month, suggests that next September—the relevant month for measuring the CPI—the increase will nudge 5%. Perhaps it will be higher, given this Government’s lack of economic competence. We do not know. In any event, an increase of this order would be significantly higher than the experience of the last few years. Earlier this year, not long ago, the September 2022 increase was expected to be only around 2%—it could be argued that this is more typical. I do not want to put ideas in the Minister’s mind, but I must ask how atypical the CPI increase next September has to be before it too will be considered atypical enough for the Government to decide that it justifies breaking the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to the triple lock The Minister needs to tell us that this year’s broken promise is truly a one-off and that the commitment to the CPI-linked increase will be adhered to, whatever next September’s increase. If we are not given such a commitment—which I suspect we will not be—then, in truth, we must conclude that we have a return to decisions about increases in the state pension being made on an ad hoc annual basis. History tells us that the inevitable outcome is that pensioners will suffer.