Speeches by Bell.

“I am reluctant to intervene, but I just want to pick up on two points that the hon. Member has just made. Men are much more likely to use salary sacrifice than women, so I offer him the chance to reconsider his last point about women being disproportionately affected. Before that, he said that the Bill meant that peopl…”

“Your report!”

“It is always a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) on securing this important debate. Budget discussions, which there have been lots of in the past month, tend to focus on economic statistics, GDP and borrowing. Those are very important, but they…”

“We have all watched the hon. Member voting with his feet by leaving the bunch of crazies that he was with before. Let us get back to what this Government are doing to drive growth: we are increasing public investment by £120 billion over this Parliament and making sure that things get built. We are building housing and…”

“My hon. Friend has been a powerful campaigner for those surpluses to be shared with the members of those pension schemes. He knows that we made an announcement at the Budget to ensure that the British Coal staff superannuation scheme surplus is shared with its members, and I know that the trustees are bringing forward …”

“The welfare state that the Conservative party created is failing, and we are changing it. Welfare spending rose three times as fast under the Conservative Government than it has under this one, because they created a broken welfare system, and I repeat: we will change it.”

“The forecasts accompanying the Budget set out that the Office for Budget Responsibility expects employment levels to rise in every year of this Parliament. They also set out that employment is forecast to be higher in every year than previously expected back in March.”

“The hon. Member is right to call those things a moral and economic disgrace. Does he know who created them? It was the Conservative party opposite. Who saw a 50% rise in the number of those not in education, employment or training? The party opposite. Who created the benefits system that is failing today? The party opp…”

“Energy bills are too high. The Conservatives left Britain dependent on the rollercoaster of gas prices, and left families paying almost £2 billion on bills for their failed energy efficiency scheme, the energy company obligation. We are scrapping ECO and taking some of the expensive levies off bills. My hon. Friend mak…”

“To tackle pensioner poverty, we are both increasing the state pension and running the biggest ever pension credit take-up campaign. Raising the new state pension in line with the triple lock over this Parliament is set to increase it by over £2,000 a year, while 60,000 extra pension credit awards were made in the year …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that important question. I, like her, have met and listened to lots of those affected by the lack of indexation on pre-1997 accruals within the PPF and the FAS. I can assure her that, assuming the Pension Schemes Bill receives Royal Assent, the uprating will take place at the next PPF upratin…”

“I am always keen to work together with the Father of the House. He mentions the triple lock, but we are doing far more things to tackle pensioner poverty. There were 900,000 pensioners eligible for pension credit under the Conservatives who were not claiming, and that is why we have brought forward the biggest take-up …”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question because it gives me a chance to bring the House’s attention to research published after the general election in 2024 but commissioned under the last Conservative Government—I have the document here. What was the research into? It was into capping salary sacrifice pension cont…”

“There is nothing sad about Labour Members watching wages rise faster under this Government than they did under the Conservatives. There is nothing sad about our Back Benchers seeing the end of austerity and seeing public services being improved right across this country.”

“We are taking a pragmatic approach to reforming pension contributions made via salary sacrifice, the costs of which are set nearly to triple to £8 billion between 2017 and the end of this decade. The case for change was made powerfully by a previous Chancellor: “The majority of employees pay tax on a cash salary, but s…”

“As the Secretary of State set out to the House a few months ago, the decision to which the hon. Member refers is being retaken by the Department, and we have committed to updating the House on that decision in due course.”

“The hon. Gentleman is a powerful champion for his constituents and I am sure that all hon. Members will be unhappy to hear about this case. I know that staff from the Department for Work and Pensions have already been in touch with his office, and I am happy to follow up myself.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his brief question. Pensioner poverty halved under the last Labour Government. It went up under the previous Conservative Government, but it is going to come down again under this Government.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her important question. We have seen poverty rates fall less fast among people approaching the state pension age, rather than those over it. We need to look across the range of policy levers to address that, which includes growing the economy so that wages are rising and building houses so th…”

“Absolutely, is the short answer. I am always very happy to meet my hon. Friend and near constituency neighbour. I will explain how the change may help in that situation, but I am very happy to take that meeting. The changes give those trustees overseeing schemes without pre-’97 indexation greater leverage in discussion…”