Speeches by Bell.

“I thank the hon. Member for his question and his invitation to discuss some hypotheticals. I would just point out that it is only next week that the policy of extending the 5p freeze comes into effect. Fuel duty will be frozen until the end of August this year. That is the position as it is. I will turn later to how we…”

“I do not think we are going to use the power. I think the industry itself is saying that it is in savers’ interests for the UK pensions industry to look more similar to those in the rest of the world. They currently do not have a significant exposure to private assets. They think that for the same diversification reaso…”

“It is. Most of that is in the short term. I am focusing on the work we have talked about before in terms of the interaction between housing benefit and pension credit. That is our focus at the moment, but there will be lots of other things where that can be relevant that I will be happy to talk to the Committee about. …”

“Those issues are considered inside the Department. I can speak for what we will be doing as a Government, which is that the Secretary of State, in carrying out his SPA review, will be focused on that. Rightly, he asks me those kinds of questions all the time about what it means for different people and again, that is a…”

“A lot, and that goes back to the question earlier about how seriously we should take age and some of the cross-cutting characteristics that are disproportionately visible among older groups. As I say, I do think this is about all of Government. If you do not have an NHS that is functioning, people cannot get an appoint…”

“I am slightly surprised, Peter, that you are saying that the Bill is controversial, because the Conservative party decided, very unusually, not to vote against it on Second or Third Reading, so you must think it is an excellent Bill and in fact—”

“It is for the Lords. What I have always said to you is that there is only one purpose for this power. I know the Conservative party is enjoying deciding late in the day it does not support in its entirety a Bill it supported all the way through, but that is to do with the consistency of your own decision making. I have…”

“I think there is a wider question, which is probably more in the bigger labour market question. It is the traditional relationship between an employer and an employee. It is the value of retention of built-up skills. That is what is sitting behind a lot of our wish to ensure that we have this alignment of incentives be…”

“I will answer your question and then you can come in. Very exceptionally, the Conservative Opposition—and I am glad to say the Liberal Democrats as well—did not oppose the Bill, so it obviously has exceptional levels of cross-party support. It is a shame to see you changing your mind on that late in the game for some c…”

“I probably would not think about it quite like that, in terms of re-entering. As you say, evidence will show that the main effect over time of higher state pension ages—taking the three-decade view—is that it will increase your employment rates through the life course, and most of the effect does happen over a longer t…”

“You have started from what we hear as constituency MPs. I think two things are true. One is that people basically do know why the state pension age is increasing in aggregate, which is that we are an older society and we tend to live longer than we did in the 1940s and the 1920s. But then people have been worried about…”

“A lot. State pension age increases have been going on, for different reasons, since the early 1990s. If you take the long view, there is to some degree a consensus that as you see increases in longevity, there will be consequential changes in the state pension age. Sometimes that has flipped too easily into being relax…”

“On the Mayfield review specifically?”

“That was not the best; there is much more to come. I am enjoying the enthusiasm. Sector-specific support continues for the likes of agriculture and horticulture, which retain access to red diesel, after it was withdrawn from most sectors in 2022. Our extension of the temporary 5p fuel duty cut includes a proportionate …”

“I would say it is unfortunate that he had a Conservative Government that was confused about the purpose of pensions. There is a long-standing understanding that the purpose of pensions, and why we provide exceptionally generous tax relief—which we rightly do, of about £70 billion a year—is because we want people to hav…”

“I think there is a lot more agreement on that challenge. We have all had constituents or even family members in those situations. That is why I was saying earlier that we need to think about the benefit system in the round. I am sure you will have had this in your surgeries as well, but you will have 55-year-olds in th…”

“The Secretary of State has not carried out his review yet. We will set out our considerations at the time, but I am not waiting for the assessment of that. We are starting on sorting out the health service and social care. It is about impact assessment. It is about the policy to actually make sure the services are ther…”

“I will give you my lessons from that and then you can go hunting for ex-Ministers to ask them what they did and did not think back in 2023. The lessons are that notice is really important, quality of communications is really important, and quality of what the state is doing on the health and employment support side are…”

“I do not have that number. You can look at what happened last time the Department published an assessment. The impact assessment was done through the legislative process, and then alongside subsequent independent reviews and state pension age reviews by the Secretaries of State—the regular reviews we have been talking …”

“We do, and we obviously consider benefits. As with tax changes in the round, I have set out some of the changes we are making, which include—”