Pensions Bill [Lords]

Alan Reid Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I do not know how much attention the hon. Gentleman has been paying to this debate, but we championed this issue before it came to the House of Lords and as it went through the other place. We will champion it through the House of Commons as well, until this bad Bill has been thrown out.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I agree that, for a small group of women, the Bill is unfair. However, I was pleased that the Secretary of State said that he would be happy to look at transitional arrangements. The right hon. Gentleman has been very good at criticising the Government, but will he please tell the House what the Labour party’s plans are?

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for decoding the Secretary of State’s remarks and putting on record that there will be transitional arrangements. I heard about that only by looking this morning at certain blogs written by Liberal Democrat Members, who also expressed great confidence that there would be a compromise on this. We look forward to hearing a lot more about what that compromise will be. It is a shame that it is not in the Bill in time for this Second Reading debate. We would all understand the logic of this if we heard a little more from the Secretary of State about why the Government are introducing this measure.

The truth is that the Secretary of State used as a justification for his argument the idea that women in this position will somehow be living that much longer to enjoy their new pension. Well, they will draw cold comfort from that. The point is that it is simply not realistic for women in their late 50s, who are truly fearful about being given no time to adjust to their loss of income. Surely that is the critical point for us this afternoon. Women in their later 50s will have earned less over their lifetime; they have lower state pension and private savings than men; many have been unable to join a workplace pension and have interrupted their careers to look after their family; many will have stood down from jobs on the understanding that they would get that state pension early.

These are not simply my assertions; they are the Government’s own facts. The Pensions Minister was forced to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) that 40% of women aged 56 have no private pension wealth:

“The proportion of women aged 56-years-old who have no private pension wealth”,

he told the House on 10 March,

“is estimated to be 40%.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 1266W.]

What on earth are those women supposed to do with the measures in the Bill? On 4 February he admitted that the median pension saving of a 56-year-old woman is six times lower than that of a man, yet he tells us not to worry because he has a plan. He has a word of reassurance—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State should listen to the plan of the Pensions Minister. I think he will be rather pleased with it, as we were offered words of reassurance and comfort. On 14 February, the Pensions Minister said:

“One reassurance I can offer is that those women…will be eligible to apply for jobseeker’s allowance”.—[Official Report, 14 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 681-82.]

They might, I think, call that the final insult.

There is not much that unites the House these days, but concern about this Bill is fast becoming one of those causes. I understand that even the Department for Work and Pensions Whip, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who is not in her place on the Treasury Bench has said:

“I’m pressing Ministers on this because a number of women have raised it with me, and it so happens that members of my own family are in this group. It’s certainly an issue I sympathise with greatly.”

Her concern is widespread. I believe that the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) has told no less than the Deputy Prime Minister:

“I agree with the Age UK protestors: these changes should be reconsidered.”

Nearly half the Liberal Democrat MPs have signed an early-day motion that says that the Government should

“rethink its retirement timetable in the Bill so that these women have a fairer chance to plan and save for their retirement.”

Tonight, there is a chance to put a vote behind those words.

Who will vote to support the Pensions Minister? Once, he never tired of telling the Tories about the error of their ways. He was the man who once said:

“Pension policy needs to be stable and predictable years ahead, not made up on the back of a cigarette packet.”

That was still there on his website, www.stevewebb.org, on 6 October 2009. Alongside it, I found another rather apposite quote:

“It is typical of Tory policy to hit the poorest the hardest.”

That is still there on his website. This is the Pensions Minister who said:

“As ever when it comes to pensions, it is as if women are an afterthought. That is clearly not the way in which to change state pension ages.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2010; Vol. 507, c. 33WH.]

That was not on his website. That is what he said in the House of Commons in March last year. Tonight, we have the chance to help the Pensions Minister stand by his words and his record. I think that we should help him with his honour.

This is a Second Reading debate. We are supposed to be debating the principles of the Bill and we are then asked to vote on those principles. We are being asked to do this when it is perfectly clear that the Government no longer believe in the Bill. We are privy to reports in the newspapers that the Government might be working on another U-turn. I am not sure whether it is Conservative or Liberal Democrat Members who are behind it, although I know who will claim the credit. The Secretary of State told the Financial Times today that there are “issues and concerns” that need sorting out, while senior Ministers, says the Daily Mail,

“are telling the Chancellor he must think again.”

The Secretary of State, it says, is “sympathetic”. I have to ask, then: why are we voting on a Bill that the Government do not believe in? The Chief Secretary does not believe in it; the Pensions Minister does not believe in it; half of the Liberal Democrat Members do not believe in it; the Tory Whips do not believe in it. What on earth are we doing going into the Division Lobbies to vote to punish half a million women through a Bill that no one believes in? Will the hon. Gentleman answer that question now?