Gordon Prentice - Talking Politics

Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, used to believe the scandal of “frozen pensions” was an injustice crying out to be remedied.

Now that he is in a position to do something about it, he refuses. Point blank.

In evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on 11 March 2013, Webb confesses he is sympathetic to the plight of frozen pensioners, “but sympathy butters no parsnips”.

Astonishingly, he takes refuge in the 2010 Lib Dem manifesto - the one that notoriously promised to “scrap unfair university tuition fees”.

“When I stood for election in 2010, I stood on a manifesto that costed the things I was promising people I would do; I did not promise a penny to a frozen pensioner. There was no promise in the manifesto on which I stood in 2010 to frozen pensioners at all.”

Unfortunately, 550,000 frozen pensioners have been royally led up the garden path for years, often by Lib Dems seeking the moral high ground.

This is Nick Clegg:

“I can assure you that Liberal Democrats firmly believe that pensioners that have paid taxes and contributed towards National Insurance should not be penalized for choosing to live abroad in retirement”.

And David Laws:

“Uprating arrangements for the pensions of those who live abroad represent an enormous injustice. They are totally arbitrary and illogical”.

Now Webb wants us to believe frozen pensions is a settled matter and is off the agenda for good. He insists there will be no changes to the current set-up.

Instead, he seeks to divert our attention by promising action against 220,000 people living overseas who get a UK State pension but have “never set foot in the UK”.

Webb doesn’t tell the whole story and is forced to admit the changes will go much wider. 

But, under pressure, he sticks with the original line. It is all about fairness.

Webb says its wrong that a UK pension should be paid to someone who has never contributed a penny in National Insurance contributions. 

But why the punishing freeze on UK State pensions for people living in some overseas countries who have paid NICs over a working lifetime in the UK?

Fairness doesn’t get a mention. 

This time other considerations apply. We are told it is unaffordable.

Read the contributions from pensioner organisations such as the CABP in the Work and Pensions Select Committee reports attached. Search for "frozen".

Attachments:

Steve Webb on frozen pensions. 11 March 2013. Evidence to Work And Pensions Sele	[Steve Webb on frozen pensions]	598 Kb
The Single Tier State Pension Vol I.pdf	[The Pensions Bill. Work and Pensions Select Committee Vol 1]	2009 Kb
The Single Tier State Pension Vol II.pdf	[The Pensions Bill Vol 2]	530 Kb

Ten years ago, 139 Labour MPs voted against the war with Iraq.

It was a huge rebellion but not big enough.

There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Only dodgy dossiers and loud assertions.

But with the help of credulous Conservatives and furious arm-twisting by Labour whips, Blair won the vote and got the war he wanted.

Here in Canada, there is a widely held view that the Prime Minister at the time, Jean Chrétien, made the right call in keeping Canada out of it all.

Indeed, Chrétien tells the Globe and Mail he never believed the intelligence the United States claimed to have that Iraq had amassed weapons of mass destruction.

My old friend Jack Straw, who was Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, was equally convinced they were there.

In his very readable autobiography, Last Man Standing, Jack writes:  

“I have been asked a million times since the invasion whether, knowing then what I know now, I would have made the same decision. No, I wouldn’t. How could we have agreed to invade Iraq if we had known that there were no WMD there? But the question serves no purpose. We made a decision based on what we believed to be the case at the time.” (page 410)

I am left wondering who the “we” is.

The late Robin Cook, Jack’s predecessor as Foreign Secretary, says that by the time of the Commons vote on 18 March 2003, Blair no longer believed there were WMDs in Iraq.

In his valedictory memoir, The Point of Departure, Robin recalls a conversation with Blair just days before the crucial Commons vote. 

“Tony did not try to argue me out of the view I expressed that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the Chairman of the JIC and to the Prime Minister and both had assented in it.” (p 312)

He goes on:

“I have no reason to doubt that Tony Blair believed in September (2002) that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within forty five-minutes. What was clear from this conversation was that he did not believe it himself in March.”

Jack and his then US counterpart, Colin Powell, both now regret the intelligence failures that led to war.

Don’t we all.

But whether the Chilcot Inquiry, due to report in 2014, will be able to fill in the gaps in our understanding is a moot point.

Some people are simply not co-operating.

At 10.30am on Monday 25^th February, a huge billboard will be unveiled in Eastleigh drawing attention to the plight of thousands of UK state pensioners whose pensions are frozen.

This is the brainchild of the International Consortium of British Pensioners. By intervening in a UK by election – possibly for the first time - they hope to get the political parties to address the issue. Seriously.

Politicians from all parties have been kicking this particular can down the road for years, while shamelessly giving false hope to pensioners by constantly assuring them the policy was “under review”.

If we wait for the politicians to act of their own volition we shall wait forever.

Personally, I am in favour of a much more muscular approach.

The Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners neatly sums up the issue:

There are 12 million UK State pensioners, all of whom contributed similarly to the pension scheme via compulsory National Insurance contributions.

Of the 12 million, just over one million live outside the UK.

Half of the pensioners living overseas receive the same annual cost-of-living increases as those still living in the UK, while the other half does not. Their pensions are frozen simply because of where they have chosen to reside in their retirement.

Commonwealth nations and British overseas territories are home to 98% of “frozen” pensioners, including 157,000 in Canada.

Government Pensions Minister, Lord Freud, defends this outrageous discrimination solely on the grounds of cost.  

"...it has been and remains the policy of successive Governments not to enter into new agreements with countries

or territories where this would include uprating pensions in order to contain the long-term cost of the UK social

security system and ensure that it remains affordable. Requests for new agreements from other countries have

been turned down on this basis."

If it wanted to, the UK Government could act unilaterally. Unfreezing does not depend on reciprocal agreements – just a willingness to do the right thing.

In no other area of public policy would such crude and blatant discrimination be tolerated.

So, I hope the Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, will clear his diary to be at the Spitfire Roundabout by Southampton Airport Parkway railway station on Monday morning to see the giant poster revealed. Webb used to believe in unfreezing pensions but that, of course, was before he was unexpectedly pitchforked into Government to take responsibility for this very policy. 

Webb’s colleague, the Lib Dem candidate for Eastleigh, Mike Thornton, is a mortgage adviser who used to work for the Simply Finance Group in Southampton. So he knows a thing or two about money – and, presumably, the consequences of not having enough.

He should be asked if he approves of freezing some UK state pensions and not others.

This disarmingly simple question will, hopefully, be asked at Westminster over the next few weeks.

The Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee is taking evidence on the Draft Pensions Bill and the Canadian Alliance has put in a submission. The Government wants the Committee to report its findings by the end of March 2013.

But even if the report comes down in favour of unfreezing, it takes a huge leap of faith to believe the Government will act.

No. What is required is active intervention in selected high profile elections where politicians' feet are held to the fire.

Eastleigh is just a dry run.

Fiddling while the Senate Burns

The unelected Canadian Senate has fallen yet further in public esteem. If such a thing is possible. A clutch of Senators are under investigation for allegedly fiddling their expenses.

It all sounds depressingly familiar.

Here the Globe and Mail tells the story so far in two minutes.

Attachments:

How can we trust the Lib Dems again?

[Eastleigh Poster]

11669 Kb

It is no use kidding ourselves that the Coalition Government is going to do anything about the plight of the frozen pensioners, people who retire overseas with a UK State pension that, cruelly, is never uprated.

Just a few days ago, William Hague tells the Australians that Britain is too cash strapped to address the issue.

And the Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, who, in opposition, recognised there was a grotesque injustice and vowed to do something about it, has now cynically changed his mind.

He says it would cost too much.

Seems to me the time has come for pensioner organisations in Canada, Australia and in the other frozen countries to take the gloves off and to set up permanent camp in Webb’s Thornbury and Yate constituency until the General Election.

For good measure, I would recommend spending some time and money in Oliver Letwin’s marginal West Dorset constituency too on the grounds that he is responsible for “developing policy” on frozen pensions.

Of course, Labour shouldn’t get off Scot free. Their pensions spokesperson, Gregg McClymont, should be asked to clarify, from the Dispatch Box, what an incoming Labour Government’s policy would be.

Depending on the answer, he too could get it in the neck.

The International Consortium of British Pensioners and, here in Canada, the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners, have been overly polite and too deferential for too many years.

It is time they got up off their knees.

They have been endlessly led up the garden path with nods and winks and beguiling promises that pensions policies are being kept under review and, if they just show a little bit more patience, it will all work out fine.

Complete baloney.

In his statement on pension reform on 14 January, Steve Webb told MPs:

 “We now have two state pensions, entitlement to which arises under different terms, uprated according to different rules…”

He couldn’t even be bothered to mention the third variant, the pensions that are never uprated.

The handful of MPs who raise the issue in the Commons or in PQs are routinely brushed off by Webb whose stock response is to say there is “insufficient data” to answer a question or the information requested “is not collected”.

Webb told my friend, Paul Flynn, the Government couldn’t even provide an estimate of the number of frozen pensioners who exercise their entitlement to claim a temporary pensions uprating when visiting the UK or another non-frozen country.

The government, basically, doesn’t give a toss.

So, this being the case, what will it take to bring the frozen pensioners in from the cold?

Personally, I’d like to see a spirited campaign in Webb’s constituency, running from now until the General Election, financed by the Canadian and Australian pensioner organisations and others, involving newspaper ads, door to door leaflets and all the usual razzamatazz familiar to the Lib Dems.

In my mind’s eye I can see those diamond shaped signs.

Frozen Pensioners are winning here!

That should make Professor Webb sit up and take notice.

Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled in a majority decision that the veil can be worn while on the stand.

But the Justices split three ways on whether a woman testifying in Court should be allowed to wear the niquab.

The ruling passes the ball back to the trial judges who will decide, on a case by case basis, if the veil can be worn.

It is a very Canadian compromise.

And one that could work against a fair trial.

If I were in the dock I’d like to see the face of my accuser.

A person’s demeanour in Court and his or her facial expressions can be a useful pointer as to whether they are telling the truth or not. But, of course, they are not conclusive.

A good actor can get away with murder.

The ruling could increase pressure on the Government to change other rules that some regard as discriminatory.

Niquab wearing women currently have to lift their veil to participate in the ceremony awarding Canadian citizenship.

And they must be photographed unveiled to get a Canadian passport and a driving licence.

Getting a passport is very clear cut.

No photo. No travel.

Getting a fair trial these days is slightly more complicated.

The hapless Nick Clegg has been leading the Liberal Democrats for five years and it is time to look again at the memorable spat between Calamity and his arch rival Chris Huhne in 2007.

I told the Pendle Labour Party in November 2007:

Behind the smiley faces, Huhne and Clegg cannot stand each other. I have rarely seen on television two politicians of the same party tear lumps out of each other in the way they did. Huhne says Clegg flip flops on policy, staking out positions and then retreating if the criticism becomes too fierce.

Indeed.

Huhne's own travails are, of course, not over. 

He is up in Court next month on that very strange business about who was behind the wheel of his car, years ago.

Attachments:

11 November 2007.pdf

[ ]

6115 Kb

The impertinent tax cheat, Michael Ashcroft, wants to know if the Government applies any principles of acceptability to legal tax avoidance practices and, if so, what these are.

As we all know, on his elevation to the peerage in 2000, Ashcroft promised to pay UK tax on his worldwide income but then changed his mind.

Without telling anyone.

The pundit-peer, who offers advice to the Conservative Party on all manner of things, kept his non-dom status secret for over a decade. 

Will the terrible tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut force Americans, however reluctantly, to embrace strict gun controls?

I’d like to think so.

That would be the rational response to the slaughter of 20 primary school children and seven of their teachers.

But, hey, this is America.

We are told that responsible, clear thinking citizens need guns to protect themselves from “criminals, crazies and government authorities”.

Here is Cheri Jacobus, a former Republican National Committee spokeswoman and “gun rights” champion, arguing the case for armed school marshals.

The real lunatics look to the National Rifle Association for answers.

News just in that will cheer the tax cheat, Michael Ashcroft.

The former premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Michael Misick, has just been arrested in Brazil.

Misick will at last be able to put to rest those many rumours and allegations linking the litigious peer to corruption in the Caribbean.

Misick, who has been on the run for two years, is accused of corruption, misusing public money and profiting from the sale of government owned land to developers.

A simple proposal to help the Treasury would be for the tax cheat, Lord Ashcroft, to pay back taxes from 2000 when he was “raised to the peerage” to the year 2010 when he was forced to reveal his non-dom status.

His tax cheating is a matter of public record.

But, surprisingly, no-one is doing anything about it.