Pensions Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord German and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I have not intervened in these debates so far, and I hope that I will be forgiven for doing so now. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, will welcome what I am going to say, but he will be pleased to know that I will support his amendments. So far I have left things to people who are more expert than I am in these matters, but today I want to support these amendments. It is quite intolerable that women should be required to wait longer for a proper pension provision which was, as we have heard, promised to them in the coalition agreement.

We have heard quite a lot this afternoon about the cost. It is £10 billion apparently. It seems that the Government will find that difficult to find. However, I notice that, over the weekend, our Prime Minster committed the Government and the British taxpayer to a £7 billion bailout of Portugal. When money can be found for one purpose, it seems to be there, but when it needs to be found for another good purpose, it is not there. Not so long ago, we committed this country to loaning the Irish Republic £3 billion to help to deal with its economic circumstances. This is all very well if you have the money to do it. However, according to the Government, we have not got the money to honour the promise that was made to the women of this country. That is intolerable. However, there is more to it than that. I also noticed yesterday that the amount of our contribution to the European Union in net terms has moved up from £8.3 billion to £9.3 billion. That is not just for one year; that extra £1 billion will have to be paid from now on, so by 2018 we will have paid an extra £8 billion. We could almost meet this cost from the additional money that we have to pay to the European Union budget. However, that money will be found; it will have to be found, so why on earth cannot we find money for our own women in this country?

There is another point. The coalition agreement stated that the overseas aid budget should rise by £3.5 billion—I believe by 2012. That, too, will be an ongoing commitment, year in and year out. A lot of money is being spent to relieve other people but we are not prepared to do our own women justice. I know that I might be criticised for my remarks about overseas aid. I am a great supporter of overseas aid and believe that this country has made extremely good provision in that regard. However, it has to be shown to provide value for money. Noble Lords will have noted that a much more significant figure than myself—the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson—has raised this very point. He has said, and I agree with him, that the money which is paid in overseas aid must be subject to proper control, be seen to be value for money and should not go to the leaders of the relevant countries but to the people of those countries. Those words should be taken seriously.

I certainly support these amendments. In so doing, I believe that I am supporting the women of this country. The argument that we do not have the money is a spurious one, as it appears that we have plenty of money to give to other people outside this country.

[Lord German]

My Lords, before I say a word or two about this particular group of amendments, I want to say a few words about the opposition to these proposals as a whole and the manner in which it has been expressed. I refer to the opposition outside this Chamber, not within it. It is interesting to note the advocacy that has reached our ears from a huge number of organisations that have put a lot of effort into researching and tackling the issues before us. In any normal protest, you hear two questions: “What do you want and when do you want it?”. I suspect that the answer to the second question, which is always “now”, cannot be applied to pensions. This is the issue with which many of us are having to wrestle. How do you plan for the future? How do you anticipate the future? How do you look at the future? How do you predict what will happen in the years to come? The standard answer is, “We would not be starting from here”. However, pensions reform in this country has been very slow in coming. Where it has happened, people have realised that they should have done it a lot earlier, so there will always be change and acceleration and the interests of a future generation will always have to be taken into account. It is that future generation that we have to bear in mind in this group of amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, we are talking about intergenerational issues, and that is the issue that we will have to face—a smaller number of younger people having to pay for a larger number of older people. The question cannot be avoided; we have to answer it.

In Committee there were amendments to this section of the Bill not only from the Conservative Benches, but from the Labour Benches and from us, all of which were differently phrased, but all of which sought to look at some very specific issues. It would be nice to have gender-free pensions language, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said. We cannot do that until such time as we have equality in the pension age. We have to arrive at that point before we can have gender-free language. It would be very nice for men to be able to contribute, and perhaps there may be a way for men to contribute in the longer term, which is something that we ought to be saying at this stage for the future. We may be able to look at those issues, and the Minister may be able to suggest some avenues.

Two specific issues were raised in Committee. It is the most vulnerable who are, of course, the least vocal in our society. Perhaps that is one reason why we have had not vocal protest but advocacy protest about some of these measures. It is the most vulnerable in our society who are going to be affected—those with no private pension savings, no partner’s pension to rely on, and for whom the personal state pension is the key. They are about 14 per cent of the women in the whole cohort and this 14 per cent of women shows why it is so important to have a good single-tier pension.

I welcome the announcement in the Budget of a £140 basic state pension because that is a huge rise. Can the Minister give us some more flesh on the bones of what the Chancellor said about this? He is smiling because this is an issue that I have constantly raised with him—that the replacement should be a basic provision for all which is both gender-free and acceptable to everyone: everyone can receive it. I hope that this big increase in the basic state pension will deal with some of the issues about the most vulnerable.

Secondly, there was the issue of inequity for the group of people who were born in 1953, 1954 or 1955. These are the people for whom there will be inequitable treatment compared with other women in their cohort. We have already heard about the sister; the right reverend Prelate gave the most extreme example earlier. We need to hear from the Minister that there is a solution for these people. Given the level of interest in this matter, how will he acknowledge and address this inequity? I hope that he will acknowledge it in his response to this group and a subsequent group of amendments.

A variety of solutions were put forward in Committee, some of which we will be debating and reflecting on today, but at this stage we must reflect the fact that this set of amendments will put more taxation on our children and those who follow us. They will have to pay for that intergenerational change and it is always going to be the same as this progresses. We have to make a judgment as to what is the right amount that our children should have to pay to make this easier.

Finally, if you are trying to predict at the moment what your pension might be and when your pension age might come and you go on to the Government’s website to find out, you will still find the existing proposals. It would be worth having the website reflect more strongly that changes are proposed and give some indication of what those changes might be, so that people who will be thinking about these matters during the course of the Bill will be able to see the changes that affect them. We need transparency and I hope that the Minister will address that.