International Women’s Day

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Friday 8th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

One or two Members of the House drew attention to the terminology used when opening speeches. I will follow my noble friend Lady Gale and open with “my Peers”.

It is a privilege and a pleasure to participate in this debate, and it is certainly not something I take for granted. I will direct my remarks to the scandal of the gender pensions gap, as an important element in the economic exclusion of women.

Broadly speaking, women receive lower state pensions than men, and, when it comes to private pensions, the gap is stunning. Women have private pensions that are, on average, only about one-third of men’s. I have spoken about this before, and no doubt I will speak about it again, but I will just summarise.

There are solutions and there are causes. There is the pay gap, obviously; so much of our pension depends on people’s earnings while they are at work, and women have lower earnings so they have lower pensions. To the extent that we can move on and remove the pay gap, that element of the pensions gap will be eliminated. But there is more to it than that. It is compounded by a number of factors, but the key one is the gender care gap. Care in our society is gendered. Childcare and eldercare are predominately undertaken by women and, because they are providing care, they lose out in their profession and work, and end up with smaller pensions. They work part-time, so their pay is lower, and they take career breaks to provide care for children and parents, and so they lose pension. They lose out even when they return to work, because of the impact on their career progression. Care, as well as pay, is the crucial element that means that women end up with poorer pensions.

What are the solutions? Clearly, we hope we are making progress, but much more needs to be done to eliminate the gap in people’s pay. We also have to address the impact on their pensions of the fact that women are the predominant care providers. To a large extent, we have to move away from that model, but I think progress will be slow. First, pay should be equalised, but there has to be access to comprehensive and affordable childcare and eldercare. We have to look at our workplace practices and the extent to which women are losing out in their career progression and so on, and provide them with information so that they know the impact. We have to look at the structure of our pension provision, and automatic enrolment is one element of that.

The key is that unpaid caregivers have to be provided with additional pension—pension credits of one form or another. My preferred option is that they accrue additional elements of their state pension and, when they come to retirement, their state pension is enhanced in recognition of the unpaid periods of care that they have undertaken during their working lifetime. We all benefit from the care provided by women, not just the family and the children, and that should be recognised in the pensions we provide.

I am looking forward to the Minister’s response. I have raised these issues on a number of occasions and I must say that I have not totally been impressed by the response so far. It is true that they are now producing the figures—as we will be told, no doubt—but the fact is that the gap exists. In the longer term, I want to see a shift in the way care is provided and in pension credits, but in the short term I have a relatively modest aim, which I hope the Minister will assure us that we can meet: whenever we enter into this sort of debate, the gender pensions gap must be automatically included in the issues that need to be addressed. When a Minister stands up, and in the progress of their speech, they must say that we are not just moving towards recognising the gender pensions gap but are looking constructively at solutions that will eliminate it.