Intergenerational Fairness — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Labor
Frank Field (Labour, Centre-left): I would not for a moment—look at me—say that people over the state retirement age should not be allowed to work; far from it. However, there is a difference when people have had jobs such as those in factories—I have not had such a job—and are simply worn out by the cost of such jobs, meaning that they will not make it to the finishing line if we keep extending that line. I am therefore making a plea that we do not go down the route of keeping the triple lock by just continuing to raise the retirement age, saying, "With fewer of you drawing the state retirement pension, we will balance the books." That approach was one of the alternatives, and I will go through the others again. One was just to continue putting all the cost on people of working age, and I have made a plea about why we should not do so. Another is to think we can just tax and tax again, but I simply do not think that Governments can get elected on that basis. They cannot put up income tax by 50% over a number of Parliaments and expect to be elected—and thanked in the process. Finally, I do not think that any party that wishes to be elected can let borrowing rip to the extent that would be needed to balance the books while keeping the triple lock I therefore make a plea to both the Government and the Opposition that they look carefully at the Select Committee’s proposal for a double lock-plus. Pension credit and the coalition Government’s triple lock have already—this will continue—raised the value of the state retirement pension compared with average earnings to a historical high. The Select Committee report says that by 2020, we should peg the state pension against earnings at the level at that time. The double lock-plus would ensure that the state pension would never from that day forward fall relative to average earnings. As there will be—perhaps in the very short term—periods during which price inflation exceeds earnings, we should honour the prices link at those times, albeit coming back to the earnings link as soon as possible. In that way, we would not actually have to face many of the terrible scenarios I have painted As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) said, the cost of the existing policy has been borne by people of working age. We should not pursue a policy of continuing to take money from that group, especially those who already find it difficult to put food on the table for their children for every meal in the way that our parents fed us when we were growing up This is not about begging both sides. If people came here with a script saying that they were going to reject the Select Committee’s report, I ask them not to read that passage, but perhaps instead to enter into discussions more widely with the House of Commons about how we can guarantee standards of living against pensioners’ earnings in 2020. We must ensure that they are never eroded, but we must also ensure that this policy of making increases at the expense of the working population ceases. We should all put such a programme to the electorate when the general election comes.