Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Gregg McClymont and Iain McKenzie

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Government are very good at finding money when they want to, yet, on issues that affect a significant number of women—half a million—and given the anxiety and financial cost involved, they just seem unmoved.

Let us reflect a little on the kind of women we are talking about. According to the Library, the median total private pension of a fit 56-year-old woman is £9,100. That is not £9,100 a year; that is £9,100 in total. The same figure for a man is closer to £53,000—and not only that: these women are more reliant than men on the state pension. Often, it is a woman’s only source of pension income, and 40% of such women have no private pension savings at all—[Interruption.] No one suggests that that is the Government’s fault, and that is a pretty simplistic suggestion from a sedentary position by the Minister, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), but the fact is that 40% of these women whom the Government are going to make wait between one year and 18 months have no private pension. The state pension is all they have.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

That particularly resonates with my constituents in Inverclyde, where over 1,000 women who do not have a large pension to look forward to will be affected by this Bill. These are women who have taken time out to look after their children and are now providing child care for their sons and daughters, and perhaps looking after elderly relatives as well. These are women who can ill afford to lose out on their state pension, and also needed the time to prepare for this.

[Gregg McClymont]

My hon. Friend is spot on. Caring is a very important issue in this context. A third of these women are already retired, in their late 50s, and are often caring for relatives. Of course, men have caring responsibilities too, but in significantly lower numbers than women.

These women also earn less, on average, than men. They have less chance of making up for the £7,800 in lost pension income that the 330,000 women waiting for 18 months are estimated to lose. If pension credit is added to that, some women are losing up to £11,000, and that is before taking into account the benefits that accrue at state pension age, such as the winter fuel allowance, free travel and so on. This is a serious financial loss to these women.