Oral Answers to Questions

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Skills are at the heart of our wider work on levelling up, which is why £3.8 billion has been allocated throughout the course of this Parliament to make sure we get the right skills for the right people in the right sectors, so that we can grow the economy in the way that is needed. I warmly commend what is going on in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, because it is precisely that kind of work that will ensure that jobs and growth really level up opportunity throughout the country.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of his fiscal policies on gender equality.

[Mr Speaker]

Does anybody want a question? Ah, Minister.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)]

Our fiscal policies support the Government’s ambition of creating a fairer and more equal society, and women are among those who will benefit the most. For example, women are expected to benefit disproportionately from the Government’s increase to the national living wage to £9.50 for workers aged 23 and above, as well as the rise in the national minimum wage for young people and apprentices.

[Hannah Bardell]

I am glad you found someone to answer, Mr Speaker.

Some 6,500 women in my Livingston constituency are WASPI women and they are furious. When I recently met them with the Women Against State Pension Inequality co-ordinator Carla O’Hara, there was anger and anxiety and there were many, many tears. Will the Minister tell me and the WASPI women from his constituency and from the constituencies of Members throughout this Chamber whether the

“fresh vigour and new eyes”

that the Prime Minister promised back in July 2019 is still on the table? Or is it, yet again, another broken promise?

[Mr Clarke]

The Government have always considered this issue, which goes back over the past decade, very carefully. For the purposes of intergenerational fairness and the wider sustainability of our pension settlement into the future, it is vital that that settlement is reflective of longer life expectancy. I am afraid that is the underpinning principle of the Government’s work and we stand resolutely behind it.