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Blair Has Pensions Bill Ready on Victory
By Cathy Newman, Financial Times
March 31 2005
Tony Blair aims to bring in laws to solve Britain's pensions crisis early in the next parliament as part of a packed legislative programme of reforms being planned for a record third Labour term.
The prime minister will use his final years in No 10 to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the country liberated by the knowledge that he will never again have to stand for office.
In an interview in Friday's Financial Times, Peter Hain, the Commons leader, says the government will introduce "sooner rather than later . . . major legislation" amid growing fears of a looming pensions time bomb.
Downing Street wants to move swiftly to legislate after the final report of Adair Turner's pension commission this autumn. A bill, which is mentioned in a draft of the Queen's Speech setting out the government's programme for the next legislative session, would be expected to get its second reading within a year of a Labour election victory.
In a hint of the potentially unpopular decisions ahead for the government, Mr Hain says of the overhaul of the pensions system: "It's going to involve in my view all sorts of considerations including people saving more themselves . . . We're not saving enough as a society."
The disclosure that a pension's bill is penciled into the government's legislative timetable suggests Mr. Blair, who has said next month's general election will be his last as Labour leader, is keen to use his remaining time in office to take controversial decisions and burnish his credentials as a reforming prime minister.
Ministers are keen to avoid the pensions crisis becoming an election issue, but the prospect of legislation in the new parliament will provoke opposition charges the government is hiding its true intentions from the electorate.
An interim report by the government-appointed Turner commission last year warned that, as life expectancy rises and people fail to save enough for retirement, plugging a shortfall in pensioners' income could cost the taxpayer £57bn more a year in today's money.
Measures being examined include raising the retirement age or forcing employees and employers to contribute to save.
Mr Hain sets out plans for an ambitious programme of reform if Labour is returned to power. "The first session is going to have about 40 bills in it which are pretty well all ready," he says, promising after the election "a really strong, radical, fizzy first Queen's Speech . . . it's going to surprise people".
The flagship measures in a session lasting 18 months are also expected to include a work and families bill, which will aim to address the shortage of afford able childcare and extend parental rights; measures to overhaul incapacity and housing benefits; a public health bill to ban smoking in most public places; new curbs on guns and knives; and plans to finish reform of the House of Lords.
Mr Hain says that the case for modernising the second chamber has been made "immeasurably stronger" by peers' recent attempts to veto legislation most recently in the wrangle over the terror laws.
Lords reform would now look not only at electing peers but limiting their authority.
"The behaviour of the Lords . . . has actually meant they have put the question of their powers centre stage," he says.
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