State Pension Age (Women)

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black]

As I said, I do not think that anybody here has a problem with the principle of transitioning towards equality. However, we are talking about women’s pensions, and it is important to bring the discussion back to that.

Many constituents who have written to me said that the information in the letters that they did receive was conflicting. They were getting different information. In one case, a constituent was told that they had enough contributions to receive their full state pension at 60, which was a few months away, only to receive a further letter three weeks later telling her that she will not get her pension until she is nearly 66. Many of the letters did not even get to the people they were supposed to reach. Some people were told by MPs and Ministers that they must have given the DWP the wrong addresses, but those women had been living in the same house for more than 20 years, so I find that difficult to believe.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on leading today’s debate, for which there is an extraordinary turnout, showing the considerable interest of so many Members in this subject. I became involved in this campaign somewhat by accident. I was approached, as were many other hon. Members, by several constituents who said they were going to be disadvantaged. None of us realised the extent of the hundreds of thousands of women who stand to be treated disproportionately unfairly.

I went along to the Westminster Hall debate, which was led by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). I expressed my sympathies and I recorded a short podcast on the subject, which has now been followed by 145,000 people, many of whom have written to me about it—and not just my own constituents either.

I want to pay tribute to the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign, which has articulated the case so well in front of the Select Committee. Its petition has now been signed, I believe, by more than 103,000 people. I want to thank the WASPI campaign for the help and support it gave me, not least in telling non-constituents to write to their own MPs rather than have them all writing to me—and I am exceedingly grateful for that.

We all agree with equalisation of the pension age. Large sums of money are involved and difficult decisions have to be made, but it is important that the rule of fairness is applied as much as possible, and it is clear that a sizeable group of women seem to be bearing the brunt of these changes disproportionately.

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important speech. I would like to ask him, while he talks about fairness, whether he realises how this feels for women of my generation who owe everything to those women who were born in the ’50s and who fought for the Equal Pay Act 1970 and for all the advantages that have given us any chance. Does he feel that unfairness to those women, as I do?

[Tim Loughton]

I applaud the hon. Lady. I have had representations from constituents who were in low-paid jobs with huge caring responsibilities for children and other family members when they did not have access to free child care and other things—and we have them to thank. Yet it is those people for whom I believe there has been a breach of trust, as these changes hit them disproportionately. We have a large duty of care to them, but I do not think we are going to fulfil it.