Pensions Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very simple and brief amendment about service wives. Service wives without children who accompany their husbands abroad have in the past relied on receiving the 60% married women’s pension as a default. Obviously the option for NI contributions through work does not easily apply if you are abroad, and voluntary NICs become expensive if you are there for a long period.

The married women’s dependency pension is going to disappear. The previous Government recognised the particular difficulties of service wives when in 2010 they introduced credits for spouses or partners accompanying service personnel abroad, so the principle is rightly established. Since then, there has been easement for JSA and ESA entitlement.

However, if you are in your late 30s you may have a decade behind you with no NI cover until the 2010 provisions kicked in. This amendment simply allows backdated credits for, frankly, an arbitrary 10 years which, if he is on a 22-year contract, should allow her sufficient cover, and later sufficient time to make up the rest of her contributory years. I do not know the numbers, and I do not know the cost. I hope the Minister will help me out. There may be a better way to do it—for example, as with the reduced married women’s stamp election, which is being turned into a 60% dependency pension, which retains the service wife’s eligibility for a 60% dependency pension, although the problem there will be split years.

I believe that the Government may have found a way to address the problem—this was a hint I received from the Minister in the other place. I hope so. If it is true, it would be great to know about it; and if it is not, this amendment, or something similar offered by the Government, might do the job. We owe it under the service covenant to support wives who do the right thing, perhaps, by accompanying their husbands abroad and then pay the price by lacking a pension when they retire. I beg to move.

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, some years ago I was chair of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body and I saw the way that wives were discriminated against. I remember one case. We went to Belize, where the commanding officer had been offered promotion conditional on his wife accompanying him. She was a very successful lawyer in London and they had to make a decision. She decided to give up her career. While she was abroad—a two-year posting—she was unable to contribute to a private pension fund because she was not doing recognised work. She was working as his partner in Belize on behalf of the British people looking after Army wives. She gave up her career and she lost the opportunity of a good private pension here as she could not contribute because she was not working in this country. She was also losing out at the end of her life because she could not contribute to the state pension scheme either. The changes made in 2010 helped, but this Bill will almost send us backwards. The changes made by my Government in 2010 did not fully resolve this issue. That is one case.

Among the officer cadre in all three services you still find wives giving up their job to accompany their husband, and they get a very raw deal. Until recently, other ranks would have gone to Germany for a two-year posting, and they, too, would lose out. Under the Armed Forces covenant and the updated report issued only this week by the noble Lord, Lord Astor, it is taken into account that we should be looking after families. I have no idea what it would cost and I cannot imagine that it would cost an awful lot of money, but maybe the Minister can help us. As my noble friend says, this may not be the way of dealing with the problem, but somehow it has to be recognised that, in bringing in a Bill that has cross-party support and in general terms is certainly advantageous for most, if not all, women, here we have a group who will continue to lose out, despite the changes that are being made. So it is with a deal of pleasure that I support the amendment, and I hope that the Minister will agree to go back and look at the issue. Perhaps he will come up with something that may not use this wording but which recognises the contribution that these women have to make—and, indeed, by which they lose out when they help their husband’s career, because the post requires accompaniment. If that solicitor, going back those few years, had said, “No, I’m not giving up my career”, the husband would have had to refuse that promotion. There are parts of the Armed Forces where the divorce rate is higher than normal. I am not suggesting that this is the only reason, but I think that it is perhaps one of a whole number of reasons, stress and overreach being another couple.