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Pensioner Poverty

I beg to move, To leave out from ““House”” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:"““welcomes the policies of this Government to tackle pensioner poverty, which have lifted around two million pensioners out of absolute poverty and over one million out of relative poverty, and have led to spending of around £12 billion extra on pensioners compared with 1997; recognises that pension credit allows pensioners to live with dignity and rewards those who have saved for their own retirement; acknowledges the introduction of and increases to the winter fuel payment and further measures to ensure pensioners can keep warm; notes the provision of free off-peak bus travel granting freedom to pensioners and ensuring that they are not isolated in their own community; welcomes the long-term framework for pensions through the Pensions Act 2007, including relinking the basic state pension to average earnings and ensuring equality for women and carers with men by 2025; and further welcomes the private pension reforms in the Pensions Bill which will enable individuals to take personal responsibility for their own retirement.””" I waited in vain for the enunciation of the principles that we were going to hear—I expected something. Do Conservative Members really expect us to believe that they have somehow changed—that they have been transformed from the hard-faced Thatcherites who removed the earnings link and slashed pensioners' incomes into compassionate Conservatives? They delude themselves that their record of 18 years in government can so easily be consigned to the dustbin of history. Pensioners, above all, will remember. They lived through the Thatcher and Major periods, and they know that at the next election the choice will be clear—Conservative or Labour. The party that broke the link with earnings, or the party committed to restoring it? The party that consigned millions of pensioners to poverty, or the party that has lifted more than 2 million out of absolute poverty? The party that forced pensioners to live on £68 a week, or the party spending an extra £12 billion a year so that no pensioner need live on less than £124 per week? Let me say to the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), who sought to remind us of history, that in the year 1988-89, cold weather payments from the Conservative Government amounted to the grand sum of £2,510, compared with the party that in 2008-09 will pay £2 billion in winter fuel payments. That is the sort of thing that pensioners remember.