Speeches by Bell.

“I do not know how much that was explicitly the trade-off, but I agree that if you step back—”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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—”

“There definitely are, I absolutely agree with that, and you mentioned some of them. It is also true that you see big differences in ethnicity. In general, you see lower life expectancy for white households, quite significantly in some cases. We obviously do look at that and that is considered in both the decisions and …”

“This Government are showing that we care about the living standards of households up and down the country, and that is exactly what we should be doing. Encouraging all retailers to engage in the fuel finder scheme, which I will come to in a second, is very important. On heating oil, we had heard worrying evidence from …”

“That is absolutely right and that is a good example. All employers—and most individuals, because they have experience of friends and family in similar situations—would agree that the interaction between any health conditions and disabilities and the nature of your job is very context dependent. That is why duties on, f…”

“We have asked the independent review—you can see this in the terms of reference—to consider the framework for thinking about the right level for the state pension age. Obviously, the statutory requirement is on the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the SPA. I am not going to get into the timings for that today.…”

“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…”

“We have asked for an independent review, and then there will be the Secretary of State’s review. I do not want to pre-empt the independent review, for politeness reasons, and I do not want to pre-empt the Secretary of State’s review for legal reasons, seniority reasons and all the rest as well. But it is a very good qu…”

“The failure to support people in ill health or with a disability to work or participate in whichever is the right way for them is a massive problem for all of society. One aspect of that may be interaction with the state pension age, but it is not the biggest one. The others are to do with people’s actual lives right n…”

“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…”

“Absolutely not. You should definitely not mislead members of the public about the very strong incentive that exists to save for their pension, because it is on all of us to provide that trust in the system. There is a very strong tax incentive to save for our pension. It is very important that all public representative…”

“If you step back and look at not just that period but that whole period of government from 2010 to 2024, that is a reasonable characterisation of what happened. I think I mainly would say what I said at the beginning, which is that people thought about that too flippantly and did not weigh sufficiently how big a deal i…”

“The hon. Gentleman is right, at least within England: yes, the funding will be delivered via local authorities, through the mechanism that was the household support fund, which becomes the crisis and resilience fund in a few weeks. We have written to local authorities to make it clear that they do not need to wait for …”

“The decision to increase it was obviously taken by the last Government, and the acceleration of it was also put in place by the last Government, so you will have to ask them who they spoke to at the time. They did publish an impact assessment along with the 2014 Act, but it is not for me to talk about. There are other …”

“It is not the tone. I don’t think if you focused on the question really seriously, you would have chosen to make an acceleration with less than five years’ notice. I do not think that is a choice people would have made. That is abstracting from your wider point, which is about the right level in the longer term. Are th…”

“I am definitely hoping to retire as well.”

“Absolutely. Again, it is not for me to speak for previous Administrations, but as I have said—and said very clearly to you—we take seriously the role of the PHSO. We take very seriously our relationship with the PHSO. That does not mean we will always agree on everything, and that is probably as it should be. I do not …”