State Pension Age: Women

Debate between David T C Davies and Patricia Gibson

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

There are times when Conservative Members support our Ministers and their policies because we know that they are doing something great to reform the country, whether it is giving more choice in the national health service, freeing up schools from local authority control or even delivering on Brexit. There are other times when we support our Ministers because we know they are taking difficult decisions for all the right reasons, because one of the centrepieces of this Government’s policy is to bring Britain’s books back into the black, to pay off the deficit and to solve the financial problems created by Labour Members, and that is what this is all about today.

We all have accepted, I think—perhaps bar one—the principle of the equalisation of the pension age, and we all accept that people are living longer, which is a wonderful thing, under our national health service. As a result, it is going to take us longer to get our pensions. However, there has been an issue with the transition. I meet women affected in my constituency, and they are honourable, decent women. They say to me that they were not informed. I am told that back in the 1990s and early 2000s, when different people were in office, they were in fact informed, but I believe these women; they clearly did not know what was going to happen.

I appreciate the help the Government have already given, but I ask them to continue to look at what is going on in jobcentres—what officials there are to help with special cases—to draw more attention to that, and, if the finances improve, to make further help available if at all possible. But I absolutely reject the ludicrous proposals put forward by SNP Members today. They have come up with an uncosted proposal that even they say will cost at least £8 billion, but which the DWP has said would cost about £14 billion. They do this knowing perfectly well that, if they chose to, they could find all the women affected in Scotland and use the powers they already have to raise taxes, cut costs elsewhere or indeed borrow money—although that might be rather harder to do because even The Guardian has reported that they borrowed £50 billion up until 2020, and they may well find there are very few people left who would lend them the money.

The reality is that SNP Members jump up and say, “This is nothing to do with us,” but, frankly, foreign affairs have got nothing to do with them either, yet that has not stopped them talking about Brexit. If they wanted to do something about this issue, they could, but they are not going to do anything because what they are really doing is playing political games—building up people’s hopes, knowing full well that they are not prepared to take the decisions that they ask my hon. Friends on the Front-Bench to take.

SNP Members wrap themselves in the flag of the suffragettes. The Conservative party needs no lessons from them in its support of women’s rights.

[Patricia Gibson]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I am not giving way.

I remind Opposition Members that it was a Conservative Government who equalised the voting age between men and women; that the first female MP to take her seat was a Conservative; that the Conservative party—