Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), the Chair of the Petitions Committee, for the excellent way she opened the debate. It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I thank the WASPI campaigners for the great job they do. I think that we should all thank them. I say to the Minister that I think it is shabby for another Minister to block people on Twitter who are doing such a lot of work to bring issues to our attention. That is a dreadful thing to do.

The former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has said that the Government made “a bad decision” over the changes to pensions. His excuse was that Ministers had not been properly briefed. Despite the excuses, it seems astonishing that so many crucial issues were overlooked. Raising the state pension age creates a need for new jobs and new support for people if they are made redundant. For all the women no longer allowed to retire at 60, there has to be a job so that they can continue to work, or a scheme for financial support.

The Commons Library estimates that 3,200 women in Greater Manchester and 9,400 women in the north-west are affected this year alone by the increases in the state pension age. Across the 10 years to 2026, those numbers rise to 100,000 in Greater Manchester and nearly 300,000 in the north-west. Across the United Kingdom, a staggering 2.5 million women will be affected by 2026. Where is the work and the suitable support for all those women? Finding suitable employment when you are in your 60s is not the same as looking for work in your teens and 20s. The experience of my constituents who are unemployed or who took redundancy hoping to retire at 60 is that suitable work or support programmes do not exist. It seems to me that the issues were known about at the time.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

When I mentioned this afternoon the case of a constituent who is a widow and is severely affected by this issue, the Minister in his reply read out a long list of benefits that the lady could receive. Unfortunately, she cannot work. In a sense, having paid in all her life—for 35 years—why should she go cap in hand to the jobcentre?

[Barbara Keeley]

Absolutely. I know of a similar experience, which I will come to in a moment.

The impact assessment for the 2011 Bill showed the number of inactive women as 31% of those aged 55 to 59 and 65% of those aged 60 to 65. Four out of 10 of the women aged 50 to 59 were inactive owing to ill health or disability, and 24% stated caring at home as their reason. What plans did the Government make to give support to such women once they were over the age of 60, in terms of suitable jobs, financial support if they were ill or disabled, or financial support if they gave up work to care for family members?

Like the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), I have a constituent who is forced to attend the Work programme. She feels that it fails to take into account her previous experience, and she feels that she is going to be “parked”, working for free for up to 30 hours a week, or face sanctions. It is difficult for her. She has mobility problems, but she has to pay her own parking costs when she attends the Work programme, because only petrol is paid for.

I have spoken to WASPI campaigners with similar problems in Greater Manchester: forced on to the Work programme at age 62, despite having more than 40 years of national insurance contributions—exactly the point that the hon. Member for Gainsborough made. I have another constituent of 62 who has worked since she was 15. She has osteoarthritis in both knees. She has had one knee replacement and is now waiting for a second. She cannot get her pension until 2019. She is on half pay from her employer and she had contributory ESA to top that up for a while. That seems fair, given that she has more than 45 years of national insurance contributions. However, after assessment she has been told she is fit to do some work and she must apply for jobs, despite having her second knee replacement scheduled soon, and despite being on sick leave from her job. She told me,

“I have been so upset with this whole procedure you are not able to get better... Can you believe it I was pleased they took the ESA off me because it is making me ill to keep dealing with them and the way you are dealt with.”

Government Members who talk about ESA and JSA, as some Members did in DWP questions earlier, should realise what it means to have to go to jobcentres, go on to the Work programme or go to ESA assessments.

We should be ashamed to have a system that treats women born in the 1950s in this way. They have worked all their lives, brought up children and paid more than 40 years of national insurance. Very few of them ever had equal pay, and certainly not equal chances of an occupational pension. So I want to ask the Minister why his Government did not consider different schemes for people who have worked all their lives and find themselves redundant or unemployed in their 60s. I can tell him that other EU states have done so.

Faced with the facts of the ill health of women in the 55 to 59 age group, why did the Government not introduce a different support scheme for women who became ill in their 60s after a lifetime of working contributions? Why have the Government not looked at a bridge pension scheme, as some other EU states have done? Why did the Government not look at allowing women aged 60-plus and living outside London to have concessionary travel, as the Mayor of London did for women—and men—with the 60+ Oystercard? Why did the Government not consider women born in the 1950s being able to qualify for winter fuel payments between the ages of 60 and retirement?

The Government are taking £30 billion off women born in the 1950s, which could mean as much as £36,000 per woman affected.