Member News
Harriet Harman has suggested that the government will look at changing rules to protect pensioners' annuities.
Speaking during prime minister's questions in the Commons on Wednesday, William Hague called on ministers to suspend rules forcing people to buy an annuity - which guarantees to pay a fixed income stream for life - before the age of 75.
Senior shadow cabinet member Hague said that current market levels meant that some people would be "locked into a lower income for the rest of their life".
"Last week we proposed suspending the rule on this and ministers did say they were looking at the proposal," he asked the leader of the House.
"Can she now cut through the delay, announce a decision by the government and say the government will suspend this rule, helping the incomes of thousands of pensioners into the future?"
Labour's deputy leader, standing in as Gordon Brown attended a European Council meeting in Brussels, said the Treasury and Department for Work and Pensions were looking at "the impact on people who have to buy their annuities within a certain period of time".
She told MPs that the government was also "concerned about pensioners" more generally.
"I think that pensioners particularly feel the effect of the fuel increases and that's why we've increased the winter fuel payment," she said.
She added: "But the most important thing is that we stabilise the markets so shares can continue to be steady and their value go up."
Hague countered that it was "all very well being concerned about it and looking at it", but calling for an immediate suspension of the rule, he said that in the current climate "swiftness in decision-making is at a premium".
Unemployment
Hague pointed to new unemployment figures showing that unemployment has risen by 164,000, and said "it is of course a grim day for the British economy and a time of anxiety for British families"
He called for the government to give firms hit by the credit problems "breathing space" and reform the insolvency laws.
Harman said that action had been taken on insolvency and insisted that the government was "not complacent at all about the situation".
Claiming that unemployment was "considerably lower" than when Labour came to power in 1997, she said £100m extra would be invested "to help those people who lose their jobs to retrain and get the skills they need for new jobs".
Given suggestions that unemployment could rise to three million by 2010, Hague said that "statements about 1997" now sound "complacent".
But Harman said: "We are not complacent about the situation in the economy.
"We have made no bones about the fact that our economy faces hard times. But nor should he write our economy off.
"Our economy is made of sterner stuff and the chancellor and the prime minister have said that we will take any action we can not only to stabilise our economy nationally, but to work internationally with other governments to stabilise the global system and that's why the prime minister is not here today."
Liberal Democrat spokesman Vince Cable questioned how "really prepared" the government is to deal with the "hundreds of thousands of people now losing their jobs" when it has just completed a programme of job cuts and efficiencies within the Department for Work and Pensions.
He also called for those losing their jobs and homes to be treated "as promptly and sympathetically as the bankers were in their hour of need".
Harman insisted that there are "improved and increased services coming from the Department for Work and Pensions".
But she said this was "not just from JobcentrePlus but also in the private and voluntary sectors".
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd