Speeches by McFadden.

“I note the right hon. Gentleman’s request for more public expenditure and I am coming on to the growth and skills levy in a moment. What we will do with that is tilt it more towards young people and towards more short courses, and this Budget puts a further £725 million into that, which will enable the full funding of …”

“The hon. Gentleman should be supporting our changes because they have done two things: they are removing a number of luxury brands from the system and they are ensuring that more British-made cars are part of the scheme, and that will continue going forward. By the end of the decade, we will have provided an additional…”

“Well, it is in the Library of the House. It is available to the Committee and to anybody who wants to look at it. It is a set of questions. It is a chunky document of about 150 pages, I think. A lot of it is concerned with printed material that was sent out, how effective it is, people’s recall of it and so on. I am be…”

“Sure. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to be here before you for the first time in my capacity as Secretary of State. I know that you personally, and the Committee, have taken a great interest in this issue for some time. The Department deals with about 20 million people across the piece, and a number…”

“There is more than one use for surpluses, yes. Some people are selling the schemes to insurance companies and all the rest of it, but the Bill allows for this—it facilitates it—and I think we should give it a chance to see how it works.”

“Well, that is the system. I am being held to account here and I am very happy to be in front of this Select Committee; that is part of our parliamentary system. Before I came to see you this morning, I was explaining to my 14-year-old daughter what an important mechanism for parliamentary accountability these appearanc…”

“Forgive me—October next year. When everybody is signed up to it there will be a bit of testing and all of that. I cannot say we will go live the next day, but that is a very important deadline in giving the basic information for the dashboard to work. I appreciate that this has gone on for a long time. We have been tal…”

“The deadline for everybody to be signed up to it is September next year.”

“Yes, we are. It is important to do that. The Minister for Pensions is probably more in the driving seat directly, but yes, with my full support, we are working with the PHSO on this to come up with an action plan. This area of how we communicate with people and how it changes over time and how people get their informat…”

“Well, I am not going to call stumps on brand new legislation before it has had a chance to have an effect, so let’s see what effect it has. We put those provisions in the Bill precisely because we wanted a mechanism to address the problem that you are raising today and I know the Committee is interested in.”

“To recap the position, the Pension Schemes Bill deals with this by facilitating a dialogue between trustees and employers in a situation where there is a surplus. Each of them has their legal responsibilities. I am obviously not going to sit here and say that the legislation that we are just putting through Parliament …”

“I believe that the Minister for Pensions has written to the Committee in the last few days with an update on this.”

“Peter, what has changed over time as the state pension age goes up?”

“I will be happy to”

“It is a good question. It is not new in that sense. The PHSO did have access to this and it has been cited in the legal case. Again, you are slightly tempting me to go further than I should. It is not new in a sense, but I think it has not been fully considered in the context of this decision before, if I can put it th…”

“The principal thing is that it was not shown to the previous Secretary of State, so it was not possible for her to take it into account in making the decision that she made. When it was cited in the judicial review of the decision, I took the view that the right course of action was to retake the decision, taking into …”

“It was set before I became the Secretary of State, so there is not too much I can say about that. There will always be debate about this and some people may think it should be higher or lower. My view, now that I am in the job, is that it is a reasonable threshold. I do not think there is a case for paying it to every …”

“You tempt me into a discussion about digital ID and its benefits. Data sharing between Departments could certainly be one of those benefits, because the lack of a digital ID reinforces the silos that Members have expressed frustration about this morning. Perhaps I am straying beyond my brief, Madam Chair.”

“A lot of effort was put into getting people to apply for pension credit. It had been a long-running issue going back many years. Many people entitled to the benefit did not apply for it. We had some success. I think an extra 60,000 people got additional awards, which is significant. That happened in part through effort…”

“It is not a commitment I can make today.”