Pensions: Women’s State Pension Age

Debate between Baroness Bakewell and Lord Freud

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the concerns of the Women Against State Pension Inequality about changes to the state pension age for women.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

The Government have no plans to revisit this policy. A substantial concession, worth £1.1 billion, to lessen the impact of increases to women’s state pension age is already in place. No women will experience increases of more than 18 months. In fact, for 81% of women, the increase will not exceed 12 months. Introducing further concessions could not be justified given the imperative to focus public resources on helping those most in need.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. He clearly does not acknowledge the scale of the injustice and the growing scale of the protest: 2.5 million women have been affected by the botched plans to align the pension ages and it is bringing increasing hardship to women who are now retired and have no income and no pension. These are women who have paid into their pension plan for decades, often since they were in their teens. This summer, the WASPI women, as they are known, held protests in 131 towns. On 11 October, they presented 200 constituency petitions to the Commons, backed by 80 MPs. This campaign is not going away. When will the Government address its cause?

[Lord Freud]

I can only repeat what the Pensions Minister, Richard Harrington, said, absolutely and explicitly, that,

“no further moves will be made to assist those women, all of whom will benefit in time from the significant increase in the new state pension”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/16; col. 566.]