Mr. Paul Johnson:

As I said a moment ago, there has been a real consequence of doing the two in the UK, that is, indexing quite differently between the lower pension age and above-pension-age benefits in terms of the much greater importance the state pension age now has for some people. In terms of the indexation of benefits under pension age, although, broadly speaking, they go up in line with prices and will go up at the same rate, when we had the four-year freeze on working-age benefits, that did not apply to incapacity benefit. There was a clear policy decision that in some sense, those on incapacity benefits were more deserving than those on unemployment benefits. As I stated earlier, it is quite difficult to make the case for long-term price indexation for most of these benefits because that is clearly a choice to make that group of people worse off relative to the rest of the population. If that is the choice that is going to be made, it needs to be made explicitly clear that the choice is to make that group of people worse off relative to people in work.