State Pension Age: Women

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Philippa Whitford

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Cunningham]

I am nearly finished. Before I conclude, I would like to ask the Minister what the Department is doing in relation to the legal challenge from the WASPI campaigners, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris). Has the Minister made contingencies for the day when the courts rule against the Government, as they may well do, and order that ’50s-born women be compensated? What is happening in relation to that?

Although we support the motion, I think that the House needs to be able to vote on a motion that will be binding on the Government.

Free Childcare

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Philippa Whitford

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Obviously, everyone in this room welcomes the expansion of childcare to 30 hours, but we are hearing that entitlement to that is only if someone is already working. As the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) said, if someone is trying to get work they get caught in this trap where they cannot accept a job because they do not know whether they will be able to organise childcare.

That is one of the differences with the Scottish scheme, which also aims to provide 30 hours; but that is 30 hours across the board, whether someone is working or not. Our approach is partly to help more people into work, but is particularly about looking at it as early learning rather than just childcare. We all face the attainment gap, particularly in the most deprived areas, and lots of research shows that it is already embedded when a child enters primary school. We blame primary and secondary schools for trying to swim against the tide. The aim is that all three and four-year-olds will have 30 hours of accredited nursery places. That is also for vulnerable two-year olds, because the earlier we can interact with those children, the more we can try to make up for the situation that they find themselves in.

[Alex Cunningham]

I welcome what the hon. Lady says about the need for early learning as opposed to babysitting. She will recognise that the Sure Start system that we developed in England was a tremendous success. We are now seeing the data, with headteachers saying that the children arriving in school are more equipped and school-ready than ever before—all the more reason why we must get this policy right as well.

[Dr Whitford]

There is no question about that. My son was in the first year of a four-year entry. The teacher noticed a difference in not having children crying and wetting themselves, totally shocked at being at school, because they had already had a gentle year in nursery. Therefore, when they started school, they went straight into learning. That is available earlier: we have it for three and four-year-olds. However, at the moment, 16 hours is not enough for people and it is not flexible enough. Increasing that to 30 hours and putting it across the board means that more women in particular can use it to get into work, by having it in place already, and we can invest in the early years development of our children.

Any of us with children know that raising them is expensive, and unfortunately families have taken quite a big hit. With the reduction in things such as tax credits—the limitation to the first two children, for example—it has never been harder for families. It is often forgotten that tax credits are for people who work, not for people who are unemployed. We often seem to forget that in these debates. There are many hard-working families who are struggling. As mentioned by the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), this could save up to £5,000 a year. That is a significant difference; but it is only a difference if someone can find a place. Therefore, if half the nurseries shut, it will be an almighty crisis. If parents have to pay for meals and other trimmings around the edges of the nursery, it is not free at all. In fact people will be hit by that who would not previously have been hit, so some people will be worse off.

We are doubling the funding. The minimum in Scotland will be £4.30 an hour, and the average will be £4.94 an hour, because ours is predicated on the real living wage, not the national living wage. That is the other thing when we talk about entitlement and the quality of nursery education. If there is just a revolving door of people who put up with it and put up with the low wages until they can get something better, we will never grow a profession that is aimed at developing the early years of our children.

We need to get ready for this. Obviously, we are having to expand this out—we need far more places than we have at the moment—so this will be workforce skills development funding. We need more diversity. Some 96% of those who work in early years are women. There are many children who have no good male role models in their lives, and we need to get more men into nursery and primary school to help to provide that. We should have a diverse workforce. There is funding to bring in over 400 more graduates to our nursery provision, because we want this to be about early learning, not just racking and stacking children so that their parents can be at work; that will not achieve what we are setting out. It is important that there is that investment in the workforce.

The most important thing is the empowerment of women to get back to work. That can get women out of the poverty trap. We already save them money. We in Scotland have the highest employment and lowest unemployment rate among women, but there are still women trapped. I remember offering a job to a woman recently. When she looked at all the sums, it was not doable, and the big piece that held her back was her childcare. That will be happening all over the place. This has to be dealt with. In Scotland we have 14 pilots on flexibility going ahead. Many Members have mentioned how inflexible the system is.

I worked as a senior registrar, as a surgeon. I was the first flexible surgical trainee in Scotland. I was paid 21 hours; I worked 50. That is fairly standard in the NHS. By the time I paid a nanny, because I needed to be on the ward shortly after seven, I took home less than unemployment benefit, because I needed to pay her a decent rate. We had to accept that for my career to go forward—we had to ride through that and accept the debt—but many of these families cannot afford to work for nothing or less than nothing. If they have a job that has antisocial hours, long hours or is all spread at one end of the week, we need to have that flexibility. We have 14 pilots looking at a whole lot of versions, but the principle is the money follows the child, so that if a family need mix and match, they can have mix and match. That will also allow a quicker expansion. Empowering women and bringing them in will also support the economy.

We have all these brains across the country: people with talent, who have been highly educated. We spend maybe a decade bringing up our children and then do not get back into the workplace. We do not have wraparound childcare for school. We need to invest in women because they are also part of the country’s future economy.

There are things that we are trying to do in Scotland. Things are being discussed here. But if we are going to do this, we have to do it properly.

Digital Equipment Ltd: Pension Scheme

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Philippa Whitford

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I certainly wonder the same thing; I have something to say to the Minister specifically on that—not about my personal choices or the hon. Gentleman’s, but about the Government’s.

Hewlett Packard can hide behind the law, and has for years, but that does not mean that what it is doing is right. When we—a group of north-east England MPs—meet representatives from Hewlett Packard a week on Monday, I intend to challenge them specifically on the decision. Despite being a large company with a substantial UK turnover, it is clearly shirking its responsibility to ensure that people who worked for a company that it took over receive the same level of support as before. Another parallel between this case and the plight of the WASPI women is that there has been no real opportunity for the people affected to make up for the shortfall in the value of their pension.

How has Hewlett Packard dealt with other pensioners in its group? Much, much better. Pensioners in all of Hewlett Packard’s European subsidiaries, except in the UK, have received regular cost of living increases. This is a case not of a business being unable to increase pensions in line with the cost of living, but of a large international corporation using a loophole in UK legislation to give it a window to not fulfil what is a moral duty. I wonder what its problem is with treating its British pensioners the same as others.

As we have heard, Hewlett Packard is not a struggling business that cannot make ends meet. It is actually the Government's largest IT supplier, and makes sales of more than a £l billion a year to the Government alone. It is a company that, in 2015, had revenues of $139 billion—not million—and profits of $7 billion. The UK Government spent £1.2 billion with the company in 2014-15, which was 25% of Hewlett Packard’s British turnover. Its highest-paid UK director received £1.64 million in 2014 and £920,000 in 2015. It would cost that company about half the cash paid to that one UK director to pay a cost of living increase this year—half the cash that one person earned in wages last year.

The pensioners affected served their time working for HP and the companies it took over. They thought they were safe in the knowledge that they had a pension and were doing everything they were supposed to. I believe the Minister should put pressure on Hewlett Packard, as I will a week on Monday, to fulfil its moral responsibility, although not a legal one, to ensure that those workers are treated fairly in retirement.

Are the Government really content with doing more than £1 billion-worth of business a year with a company that has cocked a snook at this group of British pensioners? I hope the Minister will agree that even though companies are not legally required to pay annual cost of living increases in line with inflation for workers who made contributions prior to 1997, it is a scandal that there are thousands of pensioners in this country right now whose pensions’ value has dropped significantly, and who are probably now relying on social security benefits to get by.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, this is not a legal failure of Hewlett Packard but a moral one. Does the responsibility not therefore lie in this place to ensure that the law and guidance are very clear? It is our job to protect the pensioners.

[Alex Cunningham]

I certainly agree with that. Dealing with the situation retrospectively is extremely difficult, and I do not think that is possible, but we have various Green Papers coming through the system in the near future, and I hope the Minister is listening carefully about the problems we have seen. There are so many schemes out there, and we have schemes that are not operating effectively for the people who have paid into them, whether they are turkey sandwich makers or whoever.

As I said, some of the people affected may be relying on state social security. Why is the British taxpayer having to foot that social security bill, while the Government are handing out such lucrative contracts to a company that makes vast profits from them? Clearly we need to ensure that legislation will never again allow a company to shirk its responsibilities, and I would welcome the Minister’s view on that. I hope he will also take action to resolve this injustice by sending a direct message to Hewlett Packard that if it can afford to pay cost of living increases to pensioners in other European countries, it can pay the same increase to pensioners in the UK.