State Pension Reform

Gregg McClymont Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement, although it was not as advanced as that of some newspapers over the weekend. However, he did have the decency to brief me as our paths crossed in a TV studio this morning.

Today was not supposed to be about pensions at all but about the unveiling of the Government’s flagship child care proposals, which took centre stage at the coalition relaunch last week. Unfortunately, the latest bout of coalition unity did not last even a week. The Government cannot agree on child care, but the Prime Minister was desperate to have something to talk about this morning other than Europe, so—voila—we have the pensions White Paper.

In all seriousness and in respect of the Minister’s commitment to this proposal, we will take the White Paper very seriously. However, I sound a cautionary note. The Government have form on pensions. We remember when the Government laid the 2011 Pensions Bill before the House. The Minister told the House that it was fair to all, but neglected to mention a huge unfairness. I talk, of course, of the targeting of women in their later-50s, who found that the goalposts for their retirement had been moved again at short notice. It took Labour’s digging to reveal that injustice and a Labour campaign to win Government concessions. There is therefore every reason to look closely at the detail.

The principle of a simplified state pension was laid down by the Turner commission and was supported by all parties. The Leader of the Opposition has reiterated our support for that principle. However, it is fair to note that Turner rejected an abrupt shift to a single-tier state pension, which is why the previous Labour Government adopted an evolutionary approach.

Even on my speed-reading of today’s White Paper, there will be heavy losers, steep cliff edges and significant costs if the proposal goes ahead as planned. For example, the briefing from the Government over the weekend was at pains to emphasise the women-friendly aspects of the measures. However, I want to ask the Minister directly about the 429,000 women born between 6 April 1952 and 6 July 1953. Is it the case that those 429,000 women will not qualify for the single-tier state pension, and yet men who were born between the same dates will?

Let me dig a little deeper. The Minister referred to existing pensioners. Is it the case that this proposal excludes all existing pensioners and all those who intend to retire before 2017? If so, what is his message to the 15 million or 16 million people, by my calculation, who will not be eligible for the new pension? How many pensioners does he estimate will remain on £107 a week rather than £144?

May I ask the Minister about the 1.4% national insurance tax rise on 6 million workers? As I understand it, the money raised by that tax hike will not be reinvested in the new state pension but will flow straight into Treasury coffers. If that is indeed the case, how much money will that tax grab raise, and why is the money not being reinvested in the new state pension?

More narrowly, will the de minimis 10 years of contributions be part of the process by which public sector workers and private sector defined-benefit contracted out workers will participate in the new pension? Specifically, will they need at least 10 years of contributions to the new state pension to get any pension whatever?

[Steve Webb]

indicated dissent.

[Gregg McClymont]

The Minister shakes his head, which is important. I would appreciate it if he referred to the matter in his response.

We also seek clarification on what the abolition of the state second pension means for savers. Will the state second pension part of people’s accrued rights be uprated by CPI, not under the triple lock that will apply to the single state pension? That is an important question. Furthermore, how many savers currently pay into the state second pension, and how many of them will receive a lower state pension than they would have done without this reform? In other words, how many losers will there be among those who currently save in the state second pension?

The Government claim to have learned from the 2011 Pensions Bill. They say, and have briefed widely over the weekend and this morning, that the big winners in the new system will be stay-at-home mums. Some context is needed here. The Labour Government put female pensioners at the heart of their pensions policy. Most importantly, they massively reduced the number of years of contributions that both men and women needed to get a full state pension. It was reduced enormously to 30 years from 44 for men and 39 for women. The Government propose to put it back up to 35 years. What will be the impact of that five-year rise in contributions? Specifically, will it reduce the number of pensioners eligible for a full state pension, on Department for Work and Pensions estimates? That is an important question.

May I ask the Minister about the rising state pension age, which he mentioned towards the end of his statement? The Government seem to propose a new mechanism for increasing the state pension age. I have two questions about that. First, the difference in life expectancy between a manual worker and someone doing a non-manual job will play itself out both in the amounts saved in the new state pension and in the fact that non-manual workers will get it, on average, for much longer than manual workers. How will the system be made fair, given the difference in life expectancy, with a rising state pension age?

The second question is related to that. What if manual workers in particular cannot work for as long as any new mechanism sets out that they should when the state pension age is raised? If they cannot do hard, physical labour, how will that affect the Government’s claim that there will be a massive reduction in means-testing in the new system?

Those are only some of the questions that face us as we consider the detail of the White Paper. I suspect that the argument will not disappear overnight, because there is much detail to be considered. I hope that the Minister will give us some provisional answers on important matters that are affecting our constituents and his own.

[Steve Webb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for what I would characterise as his broadly constructive response to my remarks. I welcomed his comment on the television this morning that

“the Labour party supports the principle of a flat-rate state pension”.

I welcome that because pensions are for the long term, and with two coalition parties united in support for this reform and support in principle from the official Opposition, we have a chance of stability in pensions policy, which would be good for all.

The hon. Gentleman says that the Government have form on pensions, and that is a fair cop: we restored the earnings link after 30 years, we ruled out 75p increases, and last year we introduced the biggest ever cash rise in pensions. He asked about women in their late 50s, many of whom are the very women who were penalised for time spent at home with their children. Although they got some protection on the basic pension, they did not get it on SERPS and the state second pension. The Government are putting that right for the very group of women about whom he asks.

The hon. Gentleman asked about women born in certain months, and the equivalent men. The changes are based on state pension age, and as he knows, that is different for men and women so the implications are also different. The April 2017 change is based on when people’s state pension age falls. He asked about people who “retire” but that is not really the right word—it is all to do with someone’s state pension age and whether it is before or after the change.

The hon. Gentleman asked how many pensioners are on £107. To be clear, someone who has worked in the public sector throughout their life—a teacher, for instance—would be on £107 because they contracted out of the other bit. In our system, from day one they would also be on £107 because we will take account of past periods of contracting out. Future service in the public sector at the full NI rate will add years to that £107. It is not a cliff edge; the exact day before or day after for those people is the same, but they can then work off that contracted-out deduction.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the national insurance rebate and—interestingly—suggested that we spend it on pensions. That is obviously a matter for a future Chancellor, but given that the public sector, the NHS and schools will pay significantly more national insurance, it would be interesting to know whether the hon. Gentleman’s position is that that money should go from the NHS and schools into higher state pensions. He asked about the 10-year de minimis. Let us be clear that we are not saying 10 years in the new system—the requirement is 10 qualifying years in someone’s lifetime. That is because there are backpackers who do a couple of years of bar work and 40 years later we are paying them a state pension for another 20 years. The sorts of people who would be excluded are those who come for a few years, do not really have any skin in the game and pay just a few years of national insurance. They will not get a pension—that is how we save money to spend on pensions.

On state second pension uprating, as I mentioned in my statement, for someone on £160, the first £144—at least earnings—will be triple locked in our White Paper and the balance will be linked to the CPI as SERPS is currently. The hon. Gentleman asked about people who pay into the state second pension, and except for about 5 million public sector workers and a couple of million private sector workers, everybody else pays into the state second pension. He said they were all losers—obviously they will not accrue S2P, but they will accrue a bigger flat-rate state pension.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the April 2010 changes to qualifying years which he described as an “enormous” reduction. That is, therefore, also an enormous cliff edge of the sort he accuses the Government of making, and there were virtually no transitional arrangements for that. Someone who retired a day before that enormous cliff edge got nothing, whereas someone who retired the day after got the benefit of 30 years’ contribution. There are precedents for such things. When the contribution years were set to 30, women’s state pension age was still 60. In our world, and in the future, it will be 65, 66 or 67, and it is hard to see why in a working life of 50-odd years someone should get a pension for 30 years of contributions. We are merging a pension with a 30-year rule with another pension with a 50-year rule, and we have 35 as a sort of weighted average.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about differences in life expectancy. I gently point out, however, that when the previous Government legislated for a pension age of 66, 67 and 68, they did precisely nothing about differences in life expectancy. We are recommending an independent panel to look at the issue and advise the Secretary of State.