Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Pat Glass

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

Domestic Heating Oil

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Pat Glass

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely, and I am happy to give way to hon. Members from across the House, because this debate is about an issue that affects all our constituencies.

When I first started to investigate the domestic heating oil industry, it became clear to me that it operates in a completely unregulated market, where suppliers can do exactly what they choose. A number of takeovers and mergers in recent years have led to the supply industry being owned by two or three companies. All that has happened quietly, without reference to the Office of Fair Trading or the Competition Commission. Prices are being driven up not by world shortages or global increases in the price of oil, although there is some of that. Rather, prices in this country have gone up by 100% in a very short space of time largely because suppliers have been clearly taking advantage of people in desperate need during the coldest winter in a generation.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Lady not only for allowing me to intervene, but for bringing this issue to the House. Does she agree that one of the fundamental issues in this debate is the fact that people in rural areas often do not have a choice? The problem with the market is that people do not have a choice over either the oil that they use or the suppliers available to them.