Pensions Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Bakewell

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I support the idea that these changes to the pension age are going too fast. There was a successful film recently called “Made in Dagenham”, which helped to bring home to a new generation of women how much the gender equality gap had changed. It pointed up the distance that women have come today from what they called the bad old days of discrimination. Look at us today, the film said; we enjoy much greater equality, and now we have the law on our side to back us up. Barbara Castle featured in the film, brilliantly played, and she was feisty in her defence of equality for women. The film assumed that the audience who saw it would feel that the story was complete and that equality was an accepted part of our society.

Therefore, it is sad to see a necessary piece of legislation going through that harps on the idea that women will just have to put up with this new piece of discrimination. Half the population of this country are highly tuned to notice what happens to women and the disadvantages that are placed on their lives. Women have more complicated lives than men, as we know; they take time out to have children, to nurse older people and to create stable households—an ideal that I know the Government hold precious. Women therefore need consideration in the pattern of their lives that the amendment seeks to improve.

Bringing in this change to the pension age is extremely important; it is evident that we are an ageing population and we will all of us have to work longer. It is the method by which we bring that about that calls for nuance. Nobody is challenging the fact that we are getting older. Nobody is challenging the fact that, as the noble Lord said, men have been disadvantaged. We do not want them to be disadvantaged; we want people to be treated fairly and equally, and we want gender-free legislation.

This legislation is not gender-free. It cannot be said too often. My colleagues on these Benches have said so already. Listen to the numbers: one-third of a million women will see their state pension age rise by 18 months. Thirty-three thousand will see it increase by two years. It is not just those women who are affected by this but their children, families, neighbours and other women. Women are very aware of legislation that goes against them. It is unfair—we can see that it is. Women are being penalised out of the blue because the Government are rushing forward with pension proposals that need slower and fairer introduction.

One of the Government’s flagship aspirations is to get people to show a greater personal responsibility. That is an excellent thing but how can people do that—how can they plan for their old age, which will take a lot of complicated financial arranging as people live far longer—in so short a time? Indeed, as people age and begin to look forward to their retirement, they formulate attitudes towards it that are hard to change. They see it coming towards them; they make allowances for the time it will give them to look after their own, by now very aged, parents. They may feel they deserve to see a reward coming towards them for a life of hardship and trouble. I know people feel this because they write to me, as they do to my fellow Peers. They complain in their letters that it is an outrage.

This is not a matter of discrimination that will go on in the way that the film showed discrimination operating in the 1960s and 1970s and earlier. We know that this is a transition and one that is important. Of course we have to move to a fairer system. We will all work to 70 and things will eventually come right. However, is it legitimate to see them coming right at the expense of a group of poor and disadvantaged women, who somehow have to be sacrificed on the altar of this speedy operation? In this case there is an alternative.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I, too, am concerned about what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, described as disproportionate disadvantage. I am concerned about women, the great carers in our society—the people who care about the members of their family who are perhaps more vulnerable or dependent and need extra support. They are the people who, because they care so much, are willing to give up their time and perhaps work part-time. I belonged for a period to the Standing Commission on Carers. A survey was reported to the standing commission in its first year which found that the vast majority of family carers are indeed women. It found that when women care, they are more likely to work part-time or give up their occupation, and that men who cared did so extremely well but for fewer hours. Caring was much less likely to impact on their employment hours.

This change is being made too quickly and comes too soon. I acknowledge that, on the face of it, women live longer and that it is perhaps anomalous that their current pension age is lower. Yesterday I met the carers’ forum at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was made up of 12 people who represent carers of sons, daughters, partners and elderly parents with different mental health conditions. Some cared for somebody in their family with a learning disability or autism. The majority of them were women. I asked them how this change, and the speed of this change, would affect people in their position. They represent carers of people with mental health conditions, and they made some very important points quite forcibly.

They said that pension equality is fine, but that perhaps it should come into effect when society is more equal—when women start getting equal pay and occupational pensions, and particularly when men begin to share the caring burden more equally. They support the right of carers to work; they recognise the role of work as respite. They wanted me to stress the importance of not underestimating the effect on carers of a rapid change in their pensionable age when they might have made decisions about caring and occupation in anticipation of an earlier pension age. They talked about the need for health and strength to be an effective carer and the insidious nature of caring—the way in which it can lead to so much tiredness and often depression. They said: “Adrenalin keeps us going when we are caring. But sometimes when our caring responsibilities end, that is the moment when we ourselves begin to experience health problems which we have been storing up during those caring years”.

These are people who have saved the country huge amounts of money through giving up their own occupation and their own time to care and support more vulnerable members of their families. I appreciate that, in a good carers strategy, it might well be that welfare reform will attend to carers’ needs. What they would have liked as carers is a flexible pension that took account of individual need rather than assuming the same age was right for everybody. However, I support these amendments. The speed of change is too rapid particularly for this very vulnerable group, who represent a significant number of people if it is true that as many as a sixth of this particular age group are at the moment affected or carers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, suggested.