Pensions Bill [Lords]

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont]

That bears precisely on the point. We are talking about real women and we must give due credence to their fears and anxieties, especially about due notice.

On fair notice, the fact remains that under the Government’s amended plans some women will have only five years to prepare. The shock of having to adjust at such short notice to a rise in the pension age of between 12 and 18 months cannot be overestimated—this reflects the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson). These women feel genuine anxiety. The 500,000 women in question made decisions based on what they thought was a contract with the Government that they had paid into the system for a certain amount of time and would get their state pension at a certain age. The Government have moved the goalposts dramatically for these women; there is no getting away from that and it is another way in which the Government are breaking the consensus we appeared to have in 2010.

The Government are going down a dangerous path with this Bill, which sets a precedent by which the principle of reasonable notice of changes in citizens’ state pension age is dramatically reduced. The precedent is important because as longevity rises and as the Minister already suggested, there will inevitably be further uplifts in the state pension age. The principle of reasonable notice is broken by this Bill.

The independent Pensions Policy Institute was very clear in its evidence to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on that point. The 1995 Act gave women 15 years’ notice and although the Pensions Policy Institute understood that longevity is rising and that it is necessary to make changes more quickly, it still maintained that 10 years needed to be the minimum notice that any woman was given.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I share his concern that the principle that the goalposts can be shifted with very short notice is serious. Does he agree that the problem with the longevity argument is that there are huge disparities in longevity according to people’s occupations as well as geographically? I am sure that affects his constituency, as it does mine.

[Gregg McClymont]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. That is an issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) often raises: averages can hide great disparities in social class as well as gender. That is a very important issue and I am sure the Minister is well aware of it.

The principle of reasonable notice is broken by the Bill. The Government’s concessions do not meet the fair and proper notice test, which is a principle of crucial importance. The second test we set for the Government was the proportionality test. They are unfairly and disproportionately singling out women aged 57 and 58 for harsher treatment. I do not suggest that they have singled them out deliberately—of course not—but I do say that they are not doing enough to compensate those women who have lost out in a birth date lottery that is not of their making. These women cannot, on the whole, afford the burden that the Government are placing on them, and they have certainly done nothing to deserve it. The Government should not make those women carry the heaviest burden of rising longevity—that is unfair and unjust. Some 500,000 women will still have to wait between a year and 18 months longer than they would have to reach state pension age. As I have previously stated, 330,000 women—one third of a million—will have to wait exactly 18 months longer, with the psychological and financial burdens that imposes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely. This is causing not just anxiety but fear among those women, many of whom have been barred, until recently, from private company pension schemes because they were having to work in several part-time jobs with very low incomes in order to keep their families. They are now being let down by a Government who are simply not giving them sufficient time, which is all that they are asking for, to plan for the change.

[Dr Whiteford]

Given what we have heard from the right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) about the failure of people’s health to keep up with the increase in longevity, does the hon. Lady agree that many of those women will not be in the best of health and will be having to look for jobs at a time when their health might be compromised and they are not nearly as fit as they used to be?

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree.

The Chancellor has told us that he will not balance the books on the backs of the poor abroad, so why is he prepared to balance the books to a disproportionate degree on the backs of 500,000 women who just happen to have been born between 6 October 1953 and 5 March 1955? Why is it okay to do that to those women? The Government need to listen to the women of this country and accept Labour’s amendment so that no woman will have to wait more than an extra 12 months to reach their state pension age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

Let me address that directly. What is striking as soon as one looks at the evidence on longevity is just how far behind the curve we are. When the male state pension age was set at 65, it was not so much a case of Lord Hutton writing reports on pensions as a case of Len Hutton striding out at the Oval. That was the era that we were talking about. In that almost 100 years, there have been incredible increases in life expectancy, yet the male state pension age will still be 65 for another seven years. That shows how far behind the curve we are.

The views of Lord Turner were cited by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and by others, with some suggestion that we are breaching the Turner consensus. However, Lord Turner has breached the Turner consensus, if I may say so. He said in a news interview a couple of years ago, and the world has moved on even since then:

“If I was redoing my report I would be more radical, arguing for an even faster increase in the state pension age.”

That is exactly what we are doing, in line with the Turner consensus.

[Dr Whiteford]

Does the Minister accept that although longevity has increased, healthy working life has not kept pace with longevity, and that there is a serious issue, especially for the particular group of women under discussion, many of whom will not be in the best of health in their late 50s and early 60s? That is one of the reasons why shifting the goalposts twice for this group of women is having such a disproportionate impact.

[Steve Webb]

The issue of health is certainly important. Almost all the figures that have been quoted through the debate assume that the women whose pension age is being delayed will have no money. If, as the hon. Lady rightly says, they are unable to work because of ill health and the household has no other resources, they will get a significant amount of that money through employment and support allowance and other benefits.

Clearly, there are differences between individual groups and, as the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) pointed out, between different parts of the country, but if we look at England, Wales and Scotland, for example, in terms of life expectancy at 65, in England for men since 1981 life expectancy has increased by seven years. In Wales for men it has increased by seven years, and in Scotland for men it has increased by seven years. For women, each of those figures is six years, respectively. So although there are differences, there have been substantial increases across the board.

Yes, there is big variation. I accept that point, but there have been increases across the board and we cannot say that because they have not happened for every individual in every part of the country and in every social group, we will do nothing. That is what got us into the present mess in the first place.