Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)
Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Kate Green(10 years ago)
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Kate Green
Of course, I welcome any initiatives such as those that the hon. Gentleman describes. I am looking forward to hosting a Disability Confident event shortly with my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) in our local authority. However, I think that we need to look a little more broadly than just at what we all do as individuals. It is the collective responsibility of Ministers and the collective policies of the Government that are under examination this afternoon.
When the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform questions whether disabled people are worth a full wage, does he forget that under his Government, hundreds of thousands of disabled people are right now sitting in queues, waiting to be assessed for the financial support that they should be receiving from the Government? More than 300,000 people are awaiting an assessment for personal independence payment, which is the Government’s replacement for disability living allowance.
Can Members imagine what it must be like to become disabled as a result of a catastrophic event such as a stroke or a terrible accident; to have to spend a fortune on adapting your home, on transport to get to appointments, on new equipment and on adjusting to your new life; to have to give up work and to have less money coming in; for your partner to have to give up work as well to care for you; and then for your PIP award, which should be helping with the additional costs associated with your impairment, to become stuck in an enormous backlog?
Kate Green
No, I will make some progress.
We heard again this morning in Westminster Hall that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), is determined to bring down the waiting times for PIP assessments to 16 weeks. That is welcome, but he should acknowledge that it is a less ambitious timetable than the 12 weeks from application to decision that the Government initially suggested in the PIP toolkit. Meanwhile, disabled people are left high and dry for months. I have constituents who have waited almost a year for an assessment. My constituent, Mr W, has even received compensation for the delay that he has experienced. I was shocked when I asked the Minister how much compensation payments had cost the taxpayer. In a written answer on 20 September, he told me that the Department for Work and Pensions is not bothering to keep a record.
Most pertinently, when the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform says that the way to get more disabled people into employment is to cut their pay, I point to the failure of a raft of Government policies. The work capability assessment, which was introduced by Labour in a staged manner, was then pushed through by this Government in a botched rush. There is now a backlog: 600,000 cases are awaiting a first assessment. Reassessments have been put on ice altogether. People are waiting for weeks, in some cases with no money at all coming in, for mandatory reconsideration. There is a terrible record of poor-quality decision making and a huge number of cases have been appealed successfully. Just last week, The Independent reported that thousands of people with degenerative conditions are being put in the work-related activity group and denied the support element of employment and support allowance. Can Members imagine the anxiety that that must cause, not to mention the waste of resources?
At the same time, the number of people being put into the support group overall is rising rapidly. Far from getting people into work, more people are being cast aside by the coalition Government. People are being abandoned, exactly as happened under Mrs Thatcher, when incapacity benefit was used as a means of massaging down the unemployment figures. Of course disabled people who are not able to work must get the support to which they are entitled, but many disabled people could work and would love to work, and they are being truly failed by the Government.
The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) highlighted the number of people who have moved into work, but he should also acknowledge that the gap between the employment rates of working-age disabled and non-disabled adults remains at a stubborn 30%.
Pensions Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Kate Green(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Kate Green
As so much that I agree with and endorse has been said, I am sure I can be very brief.
That we have had any concessions at all from the Government today is a tribute to the many women who have contacted Members on both sides of the House. We are disappointed, however, as this is a half-baked measure. It is half-baked in two respects. It is half-baked as it deals with only part of the problem and only some of the women who are adversely affected, when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) said, we had an opportunity to solve this problem and move forward. It is also half-baked because it does not offer a holistic response to the situation these women face. Rather, it addresses only the question of when we might grudgingly start to hand them their state pension, and it does not deal at all with the other elements of public policy that will be needed to support those women if they are not going to be eligible for a state pension until later.
Especially as we know that women’s private pension pots are significantly lower than men’s, it is regrettable that we are seeking to delay their access to the state pension before the new auto-enrolment in the National Employment Savings Trust has been in place for long enough for them to have had the opportunity to begin to build up a private pension pot. If these women are expected to remain in the workplace for longer, it is regrettable that there are no signs that the Government’s Work programme will be adapted to be better suited to helping older women find, or remain in, jobs. No thought has been given to how the Work programme will support those women.
I would be grateful if the Minister said what assessment has been made of the other financial benefits these women may have to rely on if they are not able to find paid work at the ages of 64, 65 or 66, and whether the cost the Government are talking about includes the additional level of those benefits. That is a particular concern because if women are using up their savings, they may have to draw further on the state when they reach retirement.
Other colleagues have pointed out that many older women provide child care for their children’s children. Will those children in future have to access paid-for child care that the Government will in due course be subsidising through the tax credit or universal credit?
Also, what is the health strategy in relation to the health needs of these women? We know that women in their 60s are more likely than men to suffer from functional disabilities. Some 40% of women at age 60 have limitations in activities of daily living, and 20% have severe limitations. I have not heard that the Minister has given any thought to that, or had any discussions with colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that we are also securing better health for those women if we expect them to remain in paid work for longer.
The key additional points I wanted to make were about the absence of a holistic response from the Government. They have hastily introduced a half-baked measure—and a fairly vicious measure for the many hundreds of thousands of women who are still being put in a situation in which their retirement is substantially delayed without their having the resources to carry themselves through to that point. I urge the Minister to think again.
Lilian Greenwood
The Minister may feel that he has heard my speech before, as we discussed his Government’s plans to accelerate the rise in state pension age at some length in Committee. However, as he did not fully address the points I made then, I make no apology for making them again.
My constituent, Lorraine Smedley, e-mailed me on Friday asking if anything can be done even at this late stage. The answer must be yes. The Minister can still change his mind; he can accept our amendment that would ensure that no one would wait more than an extra 12 months to receive their pension. Also, if he chooses not to listen, Members on the Government Benches can still decide to join the Opposition in the Lobby tonight. I hope they will do so, although the contributions we have heard so far suggest that they will not.
Members who were not fortunate enough to serve on the Bill Committee will not know about my constituent Lorraine, so let me explain why she is so angry about the Government’s plans. Lorraine worked for the national health service for many years, but, having put aside some savings, she decided to take a part-time job as she moved towards her expected retirement date. She had worked out that she could supplement her part-time wage until her retirement. She told me:
“I thought I was close enough to my retirement age to know where I stood.”
Even with the Government’s welcome concession, Lorraine is still being asked to work for an extra 15 months, and she says she does not know what to do. Working those extra 15 months before she receives her state pension is not a prospect she relishes. Her job as a community care assistant is demanding, both physically and emotionally, and she is not sure that she will be able to continue; and with the cuts in public service spending and public sector jobs, she may not have a job anyway. The prospect of claiming benefits is anathema to Lorraine. She was determined to pay her own way her whole life, and having left school at 16 and paid into the state pension pot all those years she feels that she should not have to rely on benefits now.
Lorraine’s case highlights the two reasons why the Government’s proposals are unfair. First, they do not give women adequate notice of the change. The Minister has sprung these changes on women in their late 50s without giving them a realistic time scale in which to make preparations for the loss of pension payments that they have earned and expected over many years. In 1995, the then Government legislated for the equalisation of state pension ages. Women who were expecting to retire at 60 learned that they would have to wait until they were 65 to do so. They may not have liked it but they had many, many years to adjust. Yet that same group—those same women—who knew that they would have to work or wait for an extra five years for their pension, are now being asked to accept a further rise of more than a year with just five or seven years’ notice of the change.
The second reason why the Government have got it wrong is that the changes lead to one group being asked to bear an unfair share of the burden. According to the Department’s impact assessment, the proposals in the Bill affect about 5 million people—2.3 million men and 2.6 million women. About 4.5 million people will have their state pension age increased by a year or less, and their position is unaffected by the Minister’s last-minute amendment. An estimated 500,000 people, all of them women born between 6 October 1953 and 5 October 1954, will still have their pension age increased by more than a year. Some 300,000 women will experience an increase of exactly 18 months. No man will have to wait more than 12 months extra to receive his pension. How is that fair?
I accept that there has been a significant upward revision in the life expectancy of those reaching 65 over the next decade and that those benefiting from increased longevity should share in the costs. As we live longer, we need to pay more towards our income in retirement and/or work longer. The women like Lorraine who have written to me do not disagree—they understand that they may need to work longer—but they think that they should pay a fair share. The Minister did not explain in Committee so I hope he will explain now how it is fair that those 500,000 women have to pay a bigger share than anyone else, particularly given that we also know that they, as a group, are not well-equipped to bear a greater share of that burden.
As my hon. Friends have set out, these women are less financially secure than men and are much more likely to be reliant on the state pension. If they do have savings for their pension, those are likely to be much less than those of men. These women are likely to have taken time out of the labour market to care for children, thus affecting their contributions record and their salary level. They are likely to have worked part-time and to have been excluded from an occupational pension scheme until the 1990s. The Department’s own figures confirm this: the median pension savings of a 56-year-old woman are, as has been said, just £9,100, whereas the equivalent figure for men is £52,800, which is almost 600% higher.
Although, like Lorraine, I welcome the Minister’s amendment, it just does not go far enough. Women should not bear an unfair burden, which is why I support the Labour amendments. They would mean that 1.2 million fewer people would have to work longer and would ensure that nobody would be asked to work more than 12 months extra to receive their pension.