Speeches by Milne.

“My last question is to Emily: how would you describe the relationship between unpaid caring, health and work?”

“The next question is for you first, David. You have advocated for a sectoral approach. What might that look like?”

“Thank you. Wendy, I did not notice that your hand was up there. You might have been coming in on the previous question.”

“This first question is for Joe and Jon specifically. The Health Foundation identifies the prevalence of health-harming work as a challenge. To what extent would you agree, and what options do you think are available to move to more appropriate work?”

“Another cohort that it may be argued is neglected in the review is smaller businesses. The report concentrates on large companies—those with at least 250 people and so on—but small companies employ many disabled people. Is there an omission there?”

“Thank you. David, I have a question about something you touched on a moment ago. You argue that Government Departments could provide an example in areas such as health and education, but evidence from Unison suggests that this would be challenging, given the nature of the jobs and the pressures on services. How would y…”

“Following on from the previous question, financial abuse between couples sadly does not always end in separation, and many women struggle to access child maintenance safely. Is the Home Office working with DWP colleagues to strengthen income assessments, such as by using His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs data, and to r…”

“Through this Parliament. Who knows beyond that?”

“Your decision to provide indexation on pre-’97 benefits for FAS and PPF members from January 2027 is very welcome, but the lack of any retrospectivity means that the indexation will apply only to a fraction of their original entitlement. Would you continue to consider the case for a one-off uplift to at least partially…”

“That would be close to your retirement.”

“Thank you very much.”

“So the answer is no?”

“To follow on from some of your previous answers, the coalition Government did two big things in pensions. One was to signal the rise in state pension age, which I suspect you are rather glad of, actually. The other, of course, was the triple lock. The two things are related. There is a trade-off or a tension between ha…”

“Do you see a potential conflict or challenge? If you are setting a lifestyle adequacy, it is open-ended and hard to set its limits, whereas if you say, “I’m going to track inflation,” or, “I’m going to track wages,” it is a precise objective. Do you see a potential tension between those two?”

“In practical terms.”

“Just the state pension.”

“Do you support the idea of the Pensions Commission setting some adequacy measure or lifestyle measure, even if it might be fulfilled by tracking—”

“Maybe so, but there is still an essential flip, whatever the tone in which it was done, there is that—”

“Good morning. Many people argue that in order to understand whether we have the right pension, we need to understand what the objective is. Is it about setting a quality of life? Is it about tracking against some other measure, like wages or inflation? What is your view on whether we need some measure of adequacy?”

“Related to that, do you think we should keep the triple lock?”