State Pension Age (Women)

David Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am sure the women listening to this debate will be glad that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Marcus Fysh) feels sympathy for them. When he lectures people about saving early in life, he might want to recall that many of the women we are talking about were barred from paying into secondary pension schemes.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on securing this debate. She should not have had to do so—there should have been a statement from the Government. She said the subject was complicated. People always hide behind the notion—the hon. Lady did not do so—that pensions are very complicated, but this is a very simple debate. This is not a pensions debate; it is a debate about public policy.

We have a Chancellor who has a long-term economic plan—Members might have heard about it. It was supposed to end the deficit in four years. It was a complete and utter flop. He cannot even put forward a plan that lasts four weeks. Last year he came to the House with a Budget that would have been detrimental to working people, to those facing welfare cuts and to pensions. A few weeks later he came back with £27 billion in his pocket, which he had found at the back of the settee. That was going to be the way forward. With one leap, he was free. But this morning he is all over the media telling us, “Whoa, hang on. You’ve got it wrong. We’re in a mess again. We’ve got to put the brake on again. People have to realise that we are still facing lots of austerity.”

To give them credit, Government Members who have spoken today have trotted out that line and said how hard it is going to be, as billions of pounds are needed to put right the existing wrongs. However, we have to accept that this is not like the weather. This is a political choice being imposed on the people of this country. The Government are knowingly and deliberately making women, rather than the wealthy, pay for the mistakes that resulted in the crash in 2008, caused not by the Labour party, but by the bankers and the global markets.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Just yesterday I read that the National Audit Office had identified that the cost of the UK’s complex weapons programme has increased to £14 billion a year over the past few years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is clear evidence that pensioners are suffering from the poor decisions and priorities of this Government?

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said that to put this right we would have to raise income tax by 7p. No, we would not. We could stop spending on other things. We could stop doing things like giving more money to the children of dead millionaires in inheritance tax bungs. We could stop giving businesses cuts in corporation tax at the same time as saying to poor people, “You’ve got to get even poorer.” The truth is that this has been a choice.

Two days ago, the salaries of the chief executives of the top 100 FTSE companies passed the average annual wage of working men and women. That is the level of inequality in this country. At the same time, we are saying to this group of women, “Sorry, you’ve got to carry the can for the failures of global capitalism.” By and large, Conservative Members simply do not care, because they do not understand the reality of life at the sharp end. My mother was one of the women who worked all her life. She was in and out of jobs where she was never allowed to join a pension scheme, and she was only able to build up a secondary pension scheme, so in the end she died in relative poverty. My mother died 15 years ago, but things have not really changed for the majority of women in this country, particularly the group we are talking about.

My constituent Elizabeth Ainsley wrote me a long, heartfelt letter from which I will quote only small bits. She says:

“My pensionable age has changed twice once in 1995 from 60 to 64…to bring women in line with men and then again when I was not notified until I was age 59 with 5 years to work to my retirement age that this had been changed from 64 to 66. This is just not enough time to prepare.”

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. He has reminded me of an email I had from a constituent who also said she had been double-walloped. When she was younger, she did not think about these things, but now she has health problems and she worries that she will be knocking on jobseekers door if this goes on.

[Mr Anderson]

Every one of us in this room, particularly Conservative Members, could read out cases from people who have written to us and come to see us about the inequality and the disgrace that is going on today and should never have been allowed to happen.

My constituent Elizabeth goes on to say:

“I started work at age 16 and believed for 25 years that I would receive my pension at 60 only to have this changed not once but twice”

in her lifetime. She continues:

“I feel betrayed by the government and that women of my age have been discriminated against most of our working lives, denied the ability to prepare for our retirement and are now taking the biggest hit of all so the government can rush through the transition to equal retirement age to save money.”

I believe that the Minister is a decent man, but I am not sure that he will have the power or the authority today to do what we think should be done.

The ex-Minister responsible for this was Mr Webb, the Liberal Democrats’ human shield. Where are the Liberal Democrats today? Is anybody here from the Liberal Democrats? Perhaps they are ashamed of him, as they should be, for being a human shield for the austerity agenda that they forced through during five years in coalition. He says now that he made a mistake. He admits that it was an error and he was not properly briefed by people in the DWP.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South was absolutely right to say that this is a contract with the people of this country. Yet the people of this country had no say in that contract; there was no proper negotiation where they could say, “Let me have my say and you have yours.” It was a contract imposed on them, and it has been breached. That needs to be put right and we need to do the right thing.

[Caroline Flint]

Would it not do the world of politics a very positive service if, when we get it wrong, we say we got it wrong and put it right?

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely correct. I am really glad that my right hon. Friend made that intervention just before I was about to sit down. We do want this to be put right. What we do not want is the shifty thing that happened when the Chancellor came here in December and said, “I’m not going to go ahead with the tax credits cut”, but had moved it round that so that it is going to come back and hit people on universal credit. We want this put right, and put right now.