State Pension Age: Women

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing the debate. It is an opportunity for me to address some of the points that she raised, as far as I can, given that a judicial review is ongoing. There are obviously a number of key drivers behind the decision to make these changes by successive Governments, dating back well over 25 years. It is important to briefly restate them before I turn to her points.

This change was part of a wider trend towards gender equality. The decision was taken partly as a result of European and equality legal cases in the early 1990s relating to occupational pension provision. Life expectancy and state spending were also key factors in the changes to state pension age. Following the passing of the Pensions Act 1995, the actual and projected growth in the pensioner population continued faster than anticipated as a result of increasing longevity. As a result, it was clear that a state pension age fixed at 65 was no longer affordable, fair or sustainable.

The Labour Government between 1997 and 2010, and the hon. Lady’s predecessor who was the Member of Parliament at the time, took action in the form of the Pensions Act 2007, which introduced an increase in state pension age to 66, 67 and 68 for men and women. Further changes were brought in under the Pensions Act 2011, which accelerated the equalisation of women’s state pension age and brought forward the increase in men and women’s state pension age to 66 to complete by 2020.

The Pensions Act 2014 brought forward by eight years the increase in state pension age to 67 to complete by 2028, and introduced regular, independent reviews of the state pension age—the first of which was published by John Cridland in 2017—to ensure that the system remains fair, sustainable and affordable for taxpayers. It cannot be overstated how much life expectancy was one of the key drivers of the decisions of the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010, the coalition Government between 2010 and 2015, and the Conservative Government since then.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I recognise the point he is making with regard to the equalisation of pensions between genders and increasing life expectancy, and we are all grateful to be living longer. But does he recognise that these mainly working-class women did manual and physically oppressive work, often starting at the age of 15, and they are not sharing in the benefits of longer life expectancy because of health inequalities? Does he recognise that inherent unfairness?

[Guy Opperman]

There are a number of points to be made, and I will try to address them. There are two key issues to look at: life expectancy as a nation, as assessed by the Office for National Statistics or reviewed independently by John Cridland, and healthy life expectancy. In terms of general life expectancy, after the second world war, a girl born was expected to live to 81 years and a boy to 77 years. By 2019, those figures had increased by more than 10 years for newly born girls and by more than 12 years for boys, to 92 and 89 years respectively. The hon. Lady made a point about healthy life expectancy.

[Chi Onwurah]

Health inequalities and class.

[Guy Opperman]

I accept those points. That was specifically reviewed by John Cridland on an independent basis, as ordered by Parliament, in 2017. His report, a copy of which is in the Library, addresses those points.

I will make a couple of points on Cridland’s report before I come to the issue of period life expectancy. Cridland sets out the figures on the first page of his report. In 1917 only 24 people reached their 100th birthday. In 2016 6,000 did. The expectation is that by 2015 56,000 people will reach this milestone. He estimates that by approximately 2047 life expectancy could be 98 for women and 95 for men. Given that when the state pension was introduced in 1908 it had a retirement age of 70, only one in four people were expected to reach that age and life expectancy thereafter was nine years, there has been a dramatic improvement in life expectancy.