Pension Equality for Women

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

Indeed we will. The nub of my point is that many of us come to this place as women and as carers. My husband and I still have four living parents, which is great. It is a sign of improved medical care and so on. Nevertheless, we have four children who arguably will bear the brunt of paying for these costs.

In one of my surgeries recently, I spoke to a woman who is affected by the changes to the state pension age—she is a WASPI woman. She said:

“I was born in 1956 and have been fortunate to work all my life”—

I take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy)—

“in a variety of careers that I have enjoyed.”

She explained that some of those careers were due to necessity of circumstance. She was warned in two letters that her state pension age would be changing. She will receive her state pension at 66.

She went on:

“I will be 62 next birthday and even if I was in receipt of a pension, I would struggle to stop working as I thoroughly enjoy my current job.”

That is what I mean about the need to consider this issue on a more individual basis. The woman continued:

“I appreciate that I am very fortunate as I am blessed with good health”—

there have been several allusions to that in the debate. She said that she had a supportive husband

“and 3 lovely children. I expect to live longer than my parents but my perception is that my children struggle more financially than I did at their age. I realise that my taxes contributed to my parents’ pensions and my children’s taxes will fund mine. I cannot expect my already financially challenged children to contribute to my pension, for many, many more years. That would seem very unfair.”

If we do not see through these changes to the state pension, the burden on our children will be astronomical. This is not fair, but it is where we find ourselves. We must ensure that our response is proportionate.

It is about choices. I say gently to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) that the Scottish National party has the ability to make a unilateral decision if it wants to.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I agree that the SNP does have that ability, but should we not look at making a decision for all women in the United Kingdom, rather than saying, “Well, you can do it there and you can do it over there,”? This is a UK-wide problem, so we should not be singling people out.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) has been very generous in taking interventions, but I am afraid she has run out of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

That is not a function of the state pension system. I will resist the bait to which the hon. Lady tries to get me to rise.

It is important that we remember the costs involved. The DWP spends £264 billion a year, of which the largest part is for the state pension. At £111 billion, it is by far the biggest single piece of public expenditure. That sum gives out a state pension of on average just under £160 a week—not exactly a king’s ransom. Of course pensioner poverty would be far higher in the current age were it not for the fact that many of this generation of pensioners are fortunate enough to have occupational pensions—and good luck to them. My parents are in that generation, many of whom own property. Savills estimates that the housing equity of people over 65 is about £1.5 trillion, so that generation has been cushioned to a certain degree. It has also been cushioned by the Government’s actions to protect pensioner benefits and introduce the triple lock, all of which have protected state pension expenditure from the necessary savings made in other Departments.

[Christine Jardine]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, regardless of the figure that he quoted, the people who are paying the price for this are women born in the 1950s?

[James Cartlidge]

Actually my point was going to be that everyone will end up paying the price. Of course this debate is about a specific cohort that has been hit quite directly and over a specific period, and there is also the whole issue of notification. However, although young people going into the workforce know about the change in the retirement age and have had notification, that does not mean they will be able to save adequately for a pension. It also does not mean that they will be able to afford one, or to get a foot on the housing ladder, and they probably will not have an occupational pension. We cannot look at this issue in isolation; we need to look at the whole system.

State Pension Age: Women

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It strikes me that some of us in this House might do well to remember that our retirement might be a decision made by the electorate, who have every right to know when they can retire. They would know, were it not for the way in which the House passed legislation in 1995 and 2011 that changed the state pension age for women born in the ’50s and then failed to communicate that effectively.

The changes to the state pension age affect women such as a constituent of mine who recently came to me to tell me that although she had planned for her retirement for almost 30 years, she now found herself having to do two part-time jobs just to remain solvent. This is a woman who had worked all her life, paid her national insurance and saved for her retirement, and she now works as a cleaner and, as a result, suffers from arthritis. Her life today is very different from the one she anticipated. That she finds herself in this situation is not her fault but is down to the Government’s mismanagement. She was offered voluntary redundancy a couple of years before her anticipated retirement age. She calculated that with two years to go she could use the redundancy money, as well as her savings, to see her through, but she then discovered that she actually had to wait for the best part of a decade to retire. She has now used up her redundancy money, her savings have been whittled away, and she has those two jobs.

My constituent is not alone. Some 6,000 women in my constituency alone have been affected, and almost 3 million women throughout the country have been drawn into this unjust pension trap. Our constituents, in some cases our friends and members of our families, have been pushed into hardship, even poverty, after a lifetime of work. What is most galling is that the women who come to me, like so many others, have no quibble with the need to equalise the pension age with that of men. As has been said already, the issue is how it has been done. A situation has been created in which women born in the 1950s who, for the most part, worked all their adult lives, paid their national insurance and tax—paying for our education service and national health service—and planned for their retirement are now asked to wait.

During the general election campaign, an elderly person told me that they felt they were being punished by the Conservative Government for growing old. It is difficult not to agree with that today. One thing about this debate that has disappointed me has been the political point scoring between one side of the House and the other. Perhaps it is more important for all of us to rise above that and work to do something to reverse this monstrous injustice; otherwise, the electorate may well offer us all early retirement.

State Pension Age

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I am sure that many of the Members present have had the same experience as I have in representing their constituents: that woman after woman born in the 1950s has come and told them stories about having planned for their pension since they were young and having put money aside. In one case, someone took redundancy from a well-paid white-collar job because she would get her pension in two years, only to discover that that was not the case. In the intervening years, the savings that she had built up for her pension and the redundancy money that would have seen her through those two years had been spent. That constituent is now out working two jobs in order to make ends meet.

Regardless of what the Government might think, there is no class divide, no voter divide and no geographical divide in this. The mismanagement of the introduction of the new pension ages has trapped women all over Scotland and the United Kingdom in a poverty trap. They are being pushed into hardship by mismanagement. As my colleagues have said, we come here time after time, we make the same case, which is completely justifiable, and we hear nothing back from the Government.

An all-party parliamentary group Bill will come before the House in April next year. I hope that on that occasion, Members on both sides of the House will remember that this is not a political issue: it is about justice. It is about justice for women who were unfortunate enough to be born in the 1950s, who suffered the mismanagement of the introduction of a change in the pension age, and are now in circumstances over which they had no control. We do have control; we can change it, and I hope that every Member in the House will remember that when it comes time to vote.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I have to confess that I am one of the many who was impressed when I first heard about UC. Let me assure the hon. Members for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), for Angus (Kirstene Hair) and for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) that the principle of making benefits easier to claim and helping people back into work is one I still support. But I find that the reality—the operation of UC and all the evidence—creates a very different picture. We hear that, instead of it helping, as many as 1 million children could be pushed into poverty by 2020. That surely cannot be the legacy that my Conservative colleagues would want to leave for future generations. They surely cannot be content with what they are hearing in this Chamber from constituents and even their own Back Benchers: that families are facing rent arrears and the threat of losing their homes; that there is anxiety about missed payments; and that people are choosing between making those payments or feeding their families.

Citizens Advice Scotland has already seen more than 100,000 people, one in five of whom have waited more than six weeks for payments—and only 14 areas in Scotland have UC. We stand at an important crossroads: the Government have the opportunity to pause UC, address its many flaws and say to those coping with the cruel reality of this botched benefit reform, “We hear you. We recognise the problem and we will fix it.” I appeal to my colleagues on the Government Benches to reject that approach. Simply to abstain or to forge ahead with this now universally discredited scheme would demonstrate beyond doubt the emptiness of Government claims that they are building a country for everyone.