Torsten Bell

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for opening it and for rightly highlighting and celebrating the fall in pensioner poverty, while noting that that is no grounds for complacency about what happens in the years to come. I also thank the select but high-quality group of hon. Members who have chosen to speak and to share their insights, and the honourable members of the public who contributed their own voices to the debate by signing the petition. As we have heard, over 100,000 have done so. I suspect that many more people would have at least shared the sentiment behind the petition of wanting to support our pensioners in retirement. This Government certainly do. The real question is how that is best done. Do we have clear enough priorities that can be delivered on, and delivered on at times when there are many other competing pressures? Our priorities as a Government, when it comes to supporting pensioners, are twofold: raising the state pension and rescuing the NHS. The foundation of the vast majority of pensioners’ incomes is, of course, the state pension, which we have heard a lot about today.