State Pension: Equalisation

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, as I have said, this matter was properly and thoroughly debated by Parliament. All those arguments were put to both Houses of Parliament and a majority voted for the legislation more than four years ago. This afternoon, I checked quite carefully and it is clear that this issue was missing entirely from the Labour Party’s manifesto before the general election. No party committed to doing anything about the billions of pounds that it would cost to change any of these plans.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister will forgive me for going back, as I do, a long way in the history of equal opportunities for women. I would like to press her once again on this point. Does she really believe that MPs would have voted for the accelerated rise in 2011 had they known that many women had not been notified or given sufficient notice of the rise in the state pension age under the Pensions Act 1995? This really has not been a fair process all the way through, and women have been disadvantaged at an amazing number of levels.

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I have also been checking up on this point. I am assured by the department that any woman who had asked for a state pension statement since 1995 would have known what her pension age had been changed to under the Act. Given the uncertainties around the amounts of state pension that any woman could receive under the very complex system that we have at the moment, if a woman had planned her retirement on the basis of that, she would surely have got a pension statement and known about her state pension age change.