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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now in March the Chancellor is expected to announce plans to cut tax relief for pensions of high earners but he is being warned it could deter people from providing for a full pension for themselves.  That comes alongside changes to the state pension age which means women currently in their 50s, some of them will have to work until they are 66, by the end of this decade.  I am joined now by the Labour MP, Frank Field, he’s Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, a very good morning to you Mr Field.  Let’s start with that warning about the state pension and in particular a section of women who looks like are going to get a raw deal by the raising of the pension age.

FRANK FIELD:  Have got a raw deal.  The Labour government, the last Labour government and then the coalition government changed the pension age for women and it particularly affects those women born in the early 1950s and particularly those towards ’54, ’55.  There was a longish timetable set out by the Labour government, then speeded up by the coalition in 2011 and one of the questions which the campaign WASPI is asking is were we actually told?  We have had the Minister before the Select Committee and we’ve asked what did you send out, what did the Labour government send out and to whom and what did you send out telling women that the idea that they were retiring at 50 … at 60, was a no-go.   

DM: Just give us a sense of what people can do and how much it will cost them if they don’t do something about it or if the government doesn’t relent?  It is the acceleration of the increase and it is particularly acute, isn’t it, for women because they are going from 60 to 66?

FRANK FIELD:  Yes, initially the pension age was being raised from 60 which was set in the war to 65 to equalise and then there’s a move to 66 for all of us.  The problem that the members that are being before the Select Committee have actually highlighted is that they were not properly informed about this and now it is too late for them to work harder, save more and therefore they face a retirement which is totally unexpected to the retirement that they actually thought that they were getting so the pressure on the government is what did the previous Labour government say and what did you say and did you tell all of this huge number cohort group of women that their pension expectations were being changed?  There is certainly evidence before the committee which shows people downsizing their houses and the dream that they had of retiring with their husbands at a particular time is now almost null and void.  So there will be real pressure on the government on that front.

DM: And on the private pension side, should we feel any sympathy for those with big pension pots that they are going to be limited to only being able to save a million pounds and might have their high rate tax relief curtailed?  

FRANK FIELD:  It’s a good story to run and no doubt there will be pressure on the government to justify these privileges but there is a really big story behind all of this and that is, over a long period of time we’ve given pensions huge tax privileges, money paid into pension schemes are not taxed, they are taxed when the money is actually drawn out.  The cost to all of us currently is £27 billion and what I’d like the Chancellor to do is not have another go at limiting this really, I’m in favour of him doing that but saying this is the last big chance we’ve got of doing something really big with a huge tranche of money.  Now there is no way you should actually introduce this quickly, it should be phased in but if you think of no tax relief and £27 billion, in a very short period of time you could build up a sovereign wealth fund for this country.  We didn’t do that with North Sea oil, we could do it with this and therefore when people are talking about who pays for High Speed Two, who pays for seriously building houses, instead of grovelling off to the Chinese we could actually use our own money to actually be self-contained in that and people then see the real benefits of the infrastructure investments.  

DM: Now tell me, you are also writing today in kind of a hands across the political divide sense with Sir Nicholas Soames with your experience on the Balanced Migration Committee together, warning the Prime Minister – you don’t think he is asking for enough when it comes to migration in his EU renegotiations do you?

FRANK FIELD:  Well I think John Sergeant said it just before the break, in that when he set off on this journey it was thought to be brave to ask for a limitation of four years for people coming to this country before they could draw welfare benefits.  A year ago it was quite clear that the European Union as we now understand it is collapsing by the sheer weight of numbers of people trying to get in and share particularly Western European wealth, therefore well before this Nicholas Soames and I made a plea that we should actually be able to restrict and in fact impose our own borders to decide the numbers actually coming in.  When you put that demand up against what the Austrians are already doing, the Germans clearly will do even if it means shifting Mrs Merkel, the idea that we are just asking for a four year ban on drawing welfare benefits when all over Europe boundaries and borders are going up, where people actually now are frightened. Again that was a theme of the panel before the break, about fear and I find it amazing that some high-faluting people should be saying that politicians shouldn’t reflect what’s going on in the country and there is real fear about this and it will unmake the European Union.  Sadly now the Prime Minister is starting off at the head of the game, now he is actually behind it.  

DM: And what about your own party, Jeremy Corbyn?  My colleague Faisal Islam, our political editor, had a long chat with him yesterday as he visited one of the camps in Calais and one of the lessons that Mr Corbyn seemed to drawing from the Margaret Beckett review into what went wrong for your party in the general election was when it came to migration, you failed to sing the benefits of migration to the UK and Mr Corbyn mentioned the contribution to the NHS and things like that.  Is that the way you see it?

FRANK FIELD:  No, not at all.  The real problem we have is a new leadership which is in touch with lots of economic injustices but on some of the big issues about the security of the realm, about defending our borders, about defending ourselves if need be, the Labour leadership is walking off in the opposite direction to where voters are and particularly those swing Labour voters who didn’t swing our way but swung decisively and gave the government its unexpected election win last time so there is clearly going to be this tension between quite properly hitting on the economic injustices, what do we do for people towards the bottom end for which now there is growing sympathy amongst the electorate and with which we are in tune but on the big issues sadly which will decide the next election, which is about defending our borders and defending us as a nation, the Labour opposition looks as if it is walking in the opposite direction and there clearly, that’s going to have to be sorted out before the next election if we are not to get a walloping yet again.

DM: Frank Field, thank you very much, good to see you.