Sir John Hayes

My final point is that the Government have options to take and choices to make. Of course, pensions are funded from the welfare budget. There are those, perhaps including some Members on the Conservative Benches, who say that the triple lock is no longer sustainable. The Minister himself might have flirted with that idea in an earlier life when he was a thinker, not a doer—[Interruption.] No, he ran a think-tank. Now he is a man who does things; then, he was a man who only thought about doing things. I take the view that the welfare budget is burgeoning because a large number of people of working age are claiming benefits, not because they are unable to work because they are profoundly disabled, infirm or otherwise incapacitated—for those people, I stand firm and do so proudly —but because they choose not to work and to let others work and pay tax, including those pensioners drawn into taxation by the freezing of thresholds. Pensioners have every right to ask why they should struggle, as many do; we know of pensioner poverty. I have the figures here: 2.2 million pensioners are in relative low income before housing costs, and 1.3 million are in relative low income after housing costs. We know that pensioners are struggling, and they will say, “Why should we do so when others, who could work, choose not to? Why have the Government failed to recognise that?” Notwithstanding his change of status, I suspect the Minister still thinks seriously about these things from time to time, when he is not busy doing the other duties that are a necessary part of governing, including replying to my correspondence. I am sure he must have considered this issue in the broad-minded way for which I know he is famed. For heaven’s sake, let us raise thresholds. Let us protect pensioners. Let us cut welfare, but cut it wisely and reduce the benefits of those who choose not to help themselves. Welfare is a safety net, is it not? It should always be for those who cannot do without it. With those few thoughts, I leave the matter to the wisdom of the Minister and to the remainder of the Chamber —but I stand firmly and squarely behind the very appropriate advocacy of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for the pensioners in her constituency, and I stand with the pensioners in mine.