State Pension Age: Women

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and for the massive amount of work that he has been doing on the APPG with my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. It is imperative that the Government look after those women who are hardest hit, and do so as soon as possible.

Ageism remains a significant problem and is affecting people’s ability to continue working into later life, despite long-standing laws against age discrimination. Discrimination in recruitment is a significant problem and the public sector is not leading the way in the retention of its older workers when it really, really should be. With that in mind, what actions have the Government taken to minimise ageism in the recruitment process? Let us be honest: when I think of some of the women in Swansea who have to carry on working, they will, unless they are still in their job, be left having to claim universal credit although they have worked all their lives. That can be an overwhelming and humiliating experience for many. Does the Minister think that the fuller working lives strategy is working and what aspects of the Women and Equalities report have the Government implemented?

I also wish to know what the Government have done to measure the wellbeing of this particular group of women? I think I know what the answer will be. Will the Department undertake a study to analyse employment levels among women born in the 1950s, the type of work they undertake and the levels of poverty for this group of women?

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Surely there is also an historic injustice here. If the women who were born in the 1950s were growing up in the 1970s, they would have been unable to go into a shop to get credit, or to rent a television, because those shop owners would have insisted that the male partner, or the father of that person, sign something to make sure that they could get those things. There really is an historic injustice in the way in which 1950s women have been treated by society.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

That highlights the tragic state of our nation and how we have been treating women over the years. We have made great advances but, again, it is this group of women that has been hit the hardest.

There are different issues facing the women who are hit by these changes, and there are a number of movements that represent them. WASPI is the most recognised campaign, but all of them are directing their complaints about maladministration to the parliamentary ombudsman, rather than following the route of a judicial review like the BackTo60 women.

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[Tonia Antoniazzi]

We all know that not all aspects of state pension inequality are the same, which is why I was shocked by a letter from the Minister published yesterday by the Work and Pensions Committee. The letter states that the Department has concluded that the issue in the judicial review does have an impact on the ongoing complaints. But when so many of these complaints are different, will the Government tell us what aspect of the complaints make them incompatible with the judicial review? Do the Government intend to clarify what part of the grievances can be taken forward or is this just another classic exercise of kicking the issue into the long grass, hoping that the women will go away once they have their state pension, and vanish into thin air?

[Chris Stephens]

I am a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, and insisted that a letter went to the Minister to ask about the number of cases. Does it shock the hon. Lady that 2,505 cases were closed automatically as a result of the High Court decision? That is a real concern because a lot of people will not know the issues around the judicial review, and, as she says, this might very well be separate from the complaints about maladministration that were reported to the Independent Case Examiner.

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[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.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

I will move on to the particular point about healthy life expectancy.

I had prepared specifically for the south Wales example. I do not have the north-east examples, but they are broadly analogous. I may be able to provide the north-east examples before I sit down. The Office for National Statistics releases period life expectancy by local area of the United Kingdom, but not by parliamentary constituency, as I explained earlier to the hon. Member for Gower. Life expectancy at birth in Swansea is 77 for men and 82 for women, but it has increased for both men and women in that area since 2001 and 2003 by two years. It has increased in every local area of the UK over the same period. In the hon. Lady’s region, life expectancy is 17 years for men at 65 and 20 years for women, and this has increased again since 2001 and 2003.

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[Guy Opperman]

I can only refer the hon. Lady to the specifics that I have given: the Department for Work and Pensions’ assessment, “Economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over”, which contains the official statistics that we use for the fuller working lives programme, and the survey by the Office for National Statistics. I do not have a specific answer to her specific question, but I expect a consideration of that point to be within the ambit of the work that those two organisations have done.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

May I finish this point? Then I will, perfectly properly, allow the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Select Committee, to intervene. I am keen to deal with the issue of the judicial review, which I have not yet addressed.

We have appointed Andy Briggs as the business champion for older workers. Along with the Business in the Community Age at Work leadership team, he spearheads the Government’s work in helping employers to retain, retrain and recruit older workers, actively promoting their benefits to employers throughout England, both strategically and by means of practical advice.

I will now give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).

[Chris Stephens]

I am grateful to the Minister. I will be brief, because I want to hear what he has to say about the judicial review. Is he saying that it is Government policy, as well as his view, that there is a difference between an individual’s working life expectancy and an individual’s life expectancy?

[Guy Opperman]

I shall try to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s question in writing in order to be specific, but my understanding is as per the Cridland report, which was fundamentally adopted by the Government. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the reviewers assessed the position on an individual, independent basis, having heard copious evidence, travelling all over the country taking representations from trade unions and devolved Administrations and producing in the fullness of time, a very comprehensive report.

Let me now turn to the complex issue of the judicial review. Members will be aware that the High Court has ruled that a judicial review on these matters will go to a full hearing. The case is listed to be heard in the Divisional Court on 5 and 6 June. It would clearly be inappropriate for me, or any other Minister, to comment further on live litigation.

Members will also be aware that complaints of maladministration have been made about the Department’s handling of the communications relating to the state pension age changes. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has decided to suspend consideration of those cases until a final decision has been made in the judicial review. Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions has suspended work on the complaints until a final decision has been reached by the courts. We have sent—and are sending—letters explaining that to individuals who have sent complaints to the Department in order to ensure that they are properly informed of the suspensions, and information has been added to the gov.uk website.

We have also undertaken to follow up individuals who already had active complaints in the DWP system, and to give them further information on next steps following the reaching of a final decision in the courts. It is right of course that we communicate those next steps as and when they are clear.

Matters outside the scope of the judicial review will continue to follow the normal DWP complaints procedure. Separately, the independent case examiner closed all the live maladministration complaints when they became subject to legal proceedings, as is required under its governance contract. When the legal proceedings are concluded, the independent case examiner could consider reopening the cases at the request of the Department.

The actions taken by the Department in respect of the maladministration complaints is consistent with the approach of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s office. As I pointed out in my letter to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee on 15 January, this approach is fundamentally consistent with any situation where the Government are subject to a judicial review, as in this case, whether in relation to their actions or the actions of another Government—I stand here defending the actions not just of this Government but of the coalition Government, the Labour Government of 1997-2010 and the preceding Government, all of whose actions are effectively the subject matter of the judicial review.