Pension Equality for Women

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but it also affects those of us who were in our late 40s when we received the letters. I received one in 2011 or 2012, which proves that they do work. I took a 10% hit in my working life. I will be working until I am 67, I think—

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

You are not on the minimum wage.

[Jo Churchill]

Granted, but I spent a great deal of my life looking after children and so on. I am not in any way undermining the fact that in my surgery I have had not only women who have been carers—that is a broader issue for many Departments and successive Governments —but individuals who made life decisions prior to 2010. I have lobbied the Minister on that and he has discussed individual women’s cases with me at length. One in particular involved a midwife who went off and did five years’ work overseas for charity, predicating her decision on the information she had when she left. When she came back, not only was her situation affected by the fact that she had spent those five years serving other people, but she found that her midwifery registration was affected. When she tried to return to work, the job for which she could apply was compromised. So there are genuine cases, but perhaps we miss some of the importance of what we are discussing by treating everybody in this universal way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

During the many questions and debates on pensions for women, we have heard the facts, the figures and the dates relating to the 3.8 million women who are affected, so I am not going to cite figures or talk about dates. Instead, I am going to talk about a woman I met a few weeks ago, whom I will refer to as Mary.

Mary came to see me in my surgery on a particularly wet and cold morning. When she arrived she was visibly shaken and upset, because she had slipped over on wet leaves as she walked into the room. I offered to meet her at another time, but she was insistent that she wanted to speak to me that morning. She apologised for being late, and explained that she was so tired that it was making her clumsy. I asked how I could help her, and she told me that she was on bereavement leave because her son had died in July and, despite support from work, her grief made it impossible for her to return to work in the local supermarket.

Mary told me that she acts as a carer for her husband, who has a degenerative condition. His health has declined to the point where he is unable to leave his chair and needs constant care, and that was why she did not want to rearrange our appointment. She was adamant that she needed me to hear her story. She told me that she had not found out until 2013 that she would have to work until 65, and that the memory was vivid in her mind. She was told about it by a colleague, and she did not believe it at first. She told her colleague, “You must have got this wrong,” and she went home and phoned the pension line. Afterwards, she was in shock.

We know that Mary is not the only one. The Department for Work and Pensions failed to record how many letters were returned undelivered, and no further action was taken to trace women who had not received letters. A few years previously, Mary’s mother had become ill, and Mary had had to choose between going part time and giving up her management position to care for her mum, or continuing to work and sorting out carers. Mary believed at the time that she only had a few years until she could draw her pension, so she decided to go part time and care for her mother in the last few years of life.

Because of Mary’s decision to care for her mum and go part time, her work pension is vastly reduced. Mary is so broken by grief that she cannot work. She is watching her husband decline, and she faces her retirement as a widow. Knowing that her pension would change would not have stopped what happened to her son, husband or mother, but it would have enabled her to have made an informed choice about whether to have continued in full-time employment. That could have resulted in her facing retirement as a widow in a situation much more comfortable than the one she now faces.

Millions of women across the country are living in financial difficulty because of the mismanagement of the changes, having made important life decisions in the expectation of receiving their pensions at age 60. I accept that even a Labour Government cannot change what happened to Mary, but I strongly believe that it is the job of every Government—no, of every person—to reach out a hand to help people back up when they have been knocked down by life. The Government can dress this up in any way they like, but we all know that an injustice has been done to 1950s women such as Mary. Now they must right that wrong by introducing transitional arrangements for all the women affected.