Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

I will make a little progress first.

I agree with the WASPI campaign that it is clear that more should and could have been done on communication and that a lot of women have had a lot of difficulty as a result of that failure in communication. As I have said, there is still the philosophical question to address. What matters now is whether lessons have been learned by everybody involved and whether changes will be made that help people in future. So long as longevity projections continue to move upwards, the likelihood must be that the state pension age will also move upwards.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

Let me finish my point, and I will come back to the hon. Lady.

I believe that the Government have now accepted three major points, and it would be good to hear from the Minister that that is the case. First, there will be a review of the state pension age every five years—I believe a review is planned for 2017, which perhaps he will confirm. Secondly, whatever is decided as a result of that review, which should have cross-party consensus as far as possible, everybody concerned will be given a minimum of 10 years’ notice. That will address the most difficult point for members of the WASPI campaign, which is the shortness of the time in which they knew about the changes. Thirdly, and this is also important, the basis on which the new state pension age will be calculated is that all of us, men and women alike, should have a maximum of a third of our life on the state pension. That is important for the one fairness that has not been mentioned today, intergenerational fairness, so that those who are paying for the pensions of their elders are paying for us to spend only a third of our life as pensioners.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), the Chair of the Petitions Committee, for the excellent way she opened the debate. It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I thank the WASPI campaigners for the great job they do. I think that we should all thank them. I say to the Minister that I think it is shabby for another Minister to block people on Twitter who are doing such a lot of work to bring issues to our attention. That is a dreadful thing to do.

The former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has said that the Government made “a bad decision” over the changes to pensions. His excuse was that Ministers had not been properly briefed. Despite the excuses, it seems astonishing that so many crucial issues were overlooked. Raising the state pension age creates a need for new jobs and new support for people if they are made redundant. For all the women no longer allowed to retire at 60, there has to be a job so that they can continue to work, or a scheme for financial support.

The Commons Library estimates that 3,200 women in Greater Manchester and 9,400 women in the north-west are affected this year alone by the increases in the state pension age. Across the 10 years to 2026, those numbers rise to 100,000 in Greater Manchester and nearly 300,000 in the north-west. Across the United Kingdom, a staggering 2.5 million women will be affected by 2026. Where is the work and the suitable support for all those women? Finding suitable employment when you are in your 60s is not the same as looking for work in your teens and 20s. The experience of my constituents who are unemployed or who took redundancy hoping to retire at 60 is that suitable work or support programmes do not exist. It seems to me that the issues were known about at the time.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

When I mentioned this afternoon the case of a constituent who is a widow and is severely affected by this issue, the Minister in his reply read out a long list of benefits that the lady could receive. Unfortunately, she cannot work. In a sense, having paid in all her life—for 35 years—why should she go cap in hand to the jobcentre?

[Barbara Keeley]

Absolutely. I know of a similar experience, which I will come to in a moment.

The impact assessment for the 2011 Bill showed the number of inactive women as 31% of those aged 55 to 59 and 65% of those aged 60 to 65. Four out of 10 of the women aged 50 to 59 were inactive owing to ill health or disability, and 24% stated caring at home as their reason. What plans did the Government make to give support to such women once they were over the age of 60, in terms of suitable jobs, financial support if they were ill or disabled, or financial support if they gave up work to care for family members?

Like the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), I have a constituent who is forced to attend the Work programme. She feels that it fails to take into account her previous experience, and she feels that she is going to be “parked”, working for free for up to 30 hours a week, or face sanctions. It is difficult for her. She has mobility problems, but she has to pay her own parking costs when she attends the Work programme, because only petrol is paid for.

I have spoken to WASPI campaigners with similar problems in Greater Manchester: forced on to the Work programme at age 62, despite having more than 40 years of national insurance contributions—exactly the point that the hon. Member for Gainsborough made. I have another constituent of 62 who has worked since she was 15. She has osteoarthritis in both knees. She has had one knee replacement and is now waiting for a second. She cannot get her pension until 2019. She is on half pay from her employer and she had contributory ESA to top that up for a while. That seems fair, given that she has more than 45 years of national insurance contributions. However, after assessment she has been told she is fit to do some work and she must apply for jobs, despite having her second knee replacement scheduled soon, and despite being on sick leave from her job. She told me,

“I have been so upset with this whole procedure you are not able to get better... Can you believe it I was pleased they took the ESA off me because it is making me ill to keep dealing with them and the way you are dealt with.”

Government Members who talk about ESA and JSA, as some Members did in DWP questions earlier, should realise what it means to have to go to jobcentres, go on to the Work programme or go to ESA assessments.

We should be ashamed to have a system that treats women born in the 1950s in this way. They have worked all their lives, brought up children and paid more than 40 years of national insurance. Very few of them ever had equal pay, and certainly not equal chances of an occupational pension. So I want to ask the Minister why his Government did not consider different schemes for people who have worked all their lives and find themselves redundant or unemployed in their 60s. I can tell him that other EU states have done so.

Faced with the facts of the ill health of women in the 55 to 59 age group, why did the Government not introduce a different support scheme for women who became ill in their 60s after a lifetime of working contributions? Why have the Government not looked at a bridge pension scheme, as some other EU states have done? Why did the Government not look at allowing women aged 60-plus and living outside London to have concessionary travel, as the Mayor of London did for women—and men—with the 60+ Oystercard? Why did the Government not consider women born in the 1950s being able to qualify for winter fuel payments between the ages of 60 and retirement?

The Government are taking £30 billion off women born in the 1950s, which could mean as much as £36,000 per woman affected.

[Martin John Docherty]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for sponsoring this debate. We have talked about the amount of money that women will lose in terms of detriment. I hope that the Minister takes this on board, and I hope that the hon. Lady agrees with me. We heard earlier about women relying on their husbands to make up their income, but in the case of women who are married to women, both suffer detriment because of the changes in pension age.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. It is useful that he has done so, because it has not come up before. I hope the Minister will think about that, too.

Sometimes when we have debates, Ministers do not listen to the questions that are put. Some Members have said that life expectancy is still rising in this country, but it is not. The figures that were published in 2013 for 2012-13 show the first fall, which is possibly to do with how social care is being cut in this country. I want the Minister to think about the point I made earlier, which he did not seem to hear, about how female life expectancy is only 72 in parts of my constituency. If those women have to work until they are 66, they will have only six years of pensions, not 20 or 30 years as in more affluent parts of the country. Healthy life expectancy in that same ward in my constituency is 54, so why should women in Salford and in other deprived parts of the country bear the full cost of equalisation? The costs of support to women born in the 1950s via fair transitional arrangements would be transitional costs. It is the right thing to do and the Minister should agree to ask the Government to bring in those transitional arrangements.

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[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Vara]

I will not give way; I wish to make progress.

As I was saying, we must also acknowledge the wider package of reforms that we have introduced to ensure a fair deal for pensioners.

On life expectancy, people now live longer and stay healthier for longer. I took on board what the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said, but although she may have quoted a specific figure, other figures show that life expectancy is projected to increase for both men and women. In just a decade, the length of time that 65-year-olds—

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Vara]

No, I will not give way. A number of points have been made. I have listened very carefully for just under three hours and I am keen to put the Government’s views on record.