Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I am going to make a little more progress, and then I will give way. The truth is that we have had quite enough talk. The sins of omission and commission are well known, and the Government should now act. The Bills in 1995 and 2011 were their Bills, and the mistakes were their mistakes, so it is for them to put things right. Women in Britain have suffered inequality in the workplace and on payday for far too long. No Government should compound that fact when the carers and the grafters in our society, on whom we rely for so much, reach their retirement day.

There is a Budget in three weeks, and the Chancellor has a golden opportunity to rise to the challenge and put in place one of the six variants of transitional arrangements that I have talked about. He would be well advised to do so.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentions the Budget. Does he agree that, given the corporation tax cuts and the cuts to inheritance tax in the Chancellor’s most recent Budget, the Chancellor clearly has the will to spend and should now pay attention to the WASPI campaign?

[Owen Smith]

At the last Budget, the Chancellor happened to find £27 billion extra in tax revenues, which was a very handy little windfall to find down the back of the sofa, but the WASPI women will have heard that he did not spend a red cent of it—not a penny—on them, as he could have done. If he continues to play the WASPI women for fools and continues to take our pensioners for granted, then, as Baroness Altmann has told him already, he will live to regret it.

That is a sentiment that we can share right across the House. It is why not a single Conservative Member chose to vote against either of the previous calls for transitional arrangements in any of the debates we have held. It is why so many Conservative Back Benchers have pledged their support to the WASPI campaign. It is why this issue will not go away without action from the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

The Minister is speaking as though we did nothing to bring this issue to the Government’s attention during the last Parliament. That is straightforwardly not true. I participated in debate after debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who brought it to the Government’s attention time and again. As we have had so many debates about it, can we not just get on with talking about what we are going to do about it?

[Mr Vara]

I will come on to the debate we had in 2011 later in my speech. If the hon. Lady wants to talk about previous Governments, may I gently remind her of the 13 years of Labour Government, with the 10 Pensions Ministers—one Minister had the job twice—and the nine Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions? In the interests of fairness, she, along with everyone else, might wish to acknowledge the limited work, if any, that was done during the 13 years of the Labour Government to put matters right, as they put it.