Finance Bill (First sitting)

David Linden Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in another Finance Bill Committee, and I am looking forward to another one coming later this year. It feels like we have been discussing this one for quite some time, so I am glad to finally be at the Committee stage in a Committee Room. Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

I wanted to highlight our amendment on this. There have been a huge number of changes in the pensions landscape in relatively recent years. In my working lifetime, we have seen a move away from a final salary pension scheme to career average for the majority of people, even in the public sector. We have seen changes to things such as the lifetime individual savings account and the ability to withdraw pensions. Those are pretty significant changes in the landscape; pensions for people my age look very different from how they looked not that many years ago.

We have also seen changes to the Women Against State Pension Inequality issue, and the equalisation problem. A number of people have come through the door of my surgery and talked to me about how they have been caught by the WASPI issue. If they had had different pensions advice, they would not have retired in the way they did. More than one person who took early retirement now finds that they are caught by the WASPI issue when they should have retired under ill health, which would have given them a completely different outlook on their pensions. If they had had more appropriate advice when they were deciding when to retire, they would have been much better off.

I welcome the Minister’s proposal to make the first £500 of pension advice tax-free; that is an important change and one that we all generally agree with. I agree with the shadow Minister, however, who asked whether £500 is the most appropriate amount. Should it be £1,000? Should it be less? The amendment we have put forward specifically asks about the issues for women born on or after 6 April 1950, because they are the ones who have been caught by this WASPI issue. I am keen to see an increased uptake of pensions advice by those women, because for some of them changing the way in which they retire would make a difference.

Those women have been failed by the system. They have been failed by the Government, who have moved the goalposts and changed the date on which they expected to retire. Some of them retired not long ago and were completely unaware of the change. Those are people who would have read every bit of paper that came through their door. A medical secretary came to my surgery the other day. A medical secretary is someone very diligent about reading bits of information that come through the door, particularly about financial matters that are important for her future, and I believe that she would have chosen a different route to retirement if she had had appropriate advice, and if she had known what would happen on state pension equalisation and what would happen to her.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government have a pretty dire record on protecting pensioners, not least on the WASPI issue, but even on the winter fuel payment?

[Kirsty Blackman]

That is absolutely correct; I have seen people come through my surgery door to complain about that as well. I did not quite realise the difference in temperature between London and where I live until I became an MP. In London, I could quite easily not have the heating on at all through the entire year, whereas in Aberdeen my heating is on in September, or even earlier. Heating costs significantly more, so the winter fuel payment is hugely important for a number of my constituents and makes a significant difference to their lives. Those people are in fuel poverty; they have been failed by the system, and it is important to note that.

I will not stretch this out too much, but I must be clear that a number of people have been failed by changes to the goalposts. Those changes might be in how their pension is structured and what kind of pension they will get in the end because of movements away from final salary pensions, or because their state pension age has been moved, or because of things like the Government’s wonderful lifetime ISA, which means that if someone becomes sick, their lifetime ISA is considered a savings pot for benefits and held against them when they try to claim benefits. Therefore, a lifetime ISA cannot be seen as something that can be used instead of a pension, because it does not provide the level of safeguards that a real, proper pension pot does.