State Pension: Working-class Women

Debate between Ian Blackford and Mark Pawsey

Thursday 9th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Flello. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) for securing this debate and putting across vividly the impact on women in her constituency. My hon. Friends the Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) spoke about the human cost of what has happened and the fact that so many women have been denied what is rightfully theirs.

I dearly wish that none of us were here today because the case has been made time after time, and it is time that the Government started to take notice. The phrase, “doing the right thing” has been used, but when reflecting on all that has gone on, not just all our debates but the 245 Members of Parliament who have lodged petitions on behalf of the WASPI women, the Government must respond to the pressures those women have been under.

What we cannot get away from is that the women rightly feel let down and that they have not had adequate communication. The point has been made, and no one disagrees that equalisation should take place, but it must happen fairly. This affects so many women— 2.6 million throughout the UK and 243,900 in my own country of Scotland. Many of those women are working-class and have faced particular pressures. There is an opportunity here today for the Government to admit that a wrong has been done and that effective notice was not given of an increase in pensionable age, and to recognise that the process of increasing pensionable age must be slowed down. It must be slowed down before it is too late.

I want to pick up on the issue of a pension being a right. Frankly, I am sick fed up of hearing the Government say that this is not a right but a benefit. They cannot get away with weasel words, because that is all they are, Minister. All these women, including many of the women sitting here and the women from Newcastle upon Tyne Central, have paid 42 years-worth of national insurance contributions. If that does not give them a right to a pension, I do not know what does. It really is about time that the Government accepted their moral and ethical responsibilities and stopped hiding behind the language that this is not a contractual obligation.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, if what has been done had been done by private pension providers, you can bet your boots that the ombudsman would have been involved. You can bet your boots that those pension providers would have been taken to court, so for once, when you stand up this afternoon—I appreciate that you are not the Pensions Minister and are here in another guise. I apologise for using the word “you”, Mr Flello. I am asking the Minister to recognise that this is not about benefits. It is about women who have paid in, and it is about time that they got their just rewards.

We often hear that the issue is affordability, and the point was made about austerity. The Government cannot run away from the fact that there is a national insurance fund and that fund is sitting, in year 2016-17, with a surplus of more than £30 billion. We have heard about mitigation, and different proposals have been made. We in the SNP have tried to contribute to that by commissioning our own research—the Landman Economics report, which was published last year—and it has been ridiculed and brought into question by the Government.

I have always made it clear that our favoured option, option 2 in the report, which calls for the slowing down of the increase in pensionable age, which would take a further two and a half years, would cost, in the lifetime of this Parliament—I stress “in this Parliament”—an additional £8 billion, but the Government have told us that we are wrong and the figure is £30 billion. The Government should sit down with me and go through our calculations, which are based on the Treasury model. They need to stop traducing the SNP and admit that the £8 billion figure is correct and that they can meet that cost out of the surplus that they have today in the national insurance fund. I say that because the payments into the national insurance fund have come from these women. This is about their entitlement and the fact that in the course of this Parliament, the Government could easily meet that obligation. When will the Government start to listen and actually do the right thing?

Thanks to freedom of information requests, we learnt that the DWP began writing to women born between April 1950 and April 1955 only in April 2009 and did not complete that process until February 2012. It wrote to women to inform them about changes in legislation going back to the Pensions Act 1995, but they had taken 14 years to start the formal notification process. It was 14 years after the legislation had been passed before the Government bothered to write to people. Taking 14 years to begin informing women that a pension that they had paid for was to be deferred is quite something. Can we imagine the outcry if a private pension provider behaved in such a manner? There would be an outcry in this House. Considering that entitlement to a state pension is based on national insurance contributions, the Government have an obligation to act in a fair manner. They have changed the entitlement to something women have paid in for with an expectation of retiring at age 60, and when the goalposts were moved, the Government could not get round to informing the women in a timely manner.

A woman born on 6 April 1953, who under the previous legislation would have retired on 6 April 2013, would have received a letter from the DWP in January 2012 with the bombshell that she would now be retiring on 6 July 2016—three years and three months later than she might have expected, but with only 15 months’ notice. We are talking about 15 months’ written notice that what she thought was a contract the Government had willingly ripped up. That is exactly why the Government have a duty to act: women born in the 1950s have not been fairly treated.

The lawyers Bindmans have published a guide to DWP maladministration in the WASPI women’s case, and let us be in no doubt that it is maladministration that we are talking about in this instance. The paper is a damning indictment of a failure to communicate effectively and directly with the women involved. It refers to the events that led to a change in women’s pensionable age, beginning with a White Paper in December 1993 that stated:

“In developing its proposals for implementing the change the Government has paid particular attention to the need to give people enough time to plan ahead and to phase the change in gradually.”

There is not much there I would not agree with, but when we accept the need for people to plan ahead, we need to write and tell them. The intent was there in the White Paper in 1993, yet it was 2009 before the Government acted.

Then there is the issue of phasing in gradually. I would not define that as increasing women’s pensionable age by three months for each month that now passes. The pensionable age will increase by three months in the month of February and by another three months in March. That is not gradual. It is scandalous that women’s pensionable age is increasing so rapidly. It is not within the spirit of what the Government outlined in their original White Paper.

In October 2002, while giving evidence to a Select Committee, the DWP suggested that the role of the state was

“to provide clear and accurate information about what pensions will provide so that people will understand how much they can expect at retirement before it is too late to do something about it”.

How does the statement

“before it is too late to do something about it”

equate with the 15 months’ notice that women were given? It was far too late, and the DWP must accept that women were not given appropriate notice, and must put in place mitigation. I might add that it was stated that the lead-in time in the original White Paper in 1993 allowed plenty of time for people to adjust their plans, but people can do so only if they are aware of it.

We also had the DWP public policy statement from March 2002, which stated:

“It is widely accepted that the department has a duty to give information or advice to inform the public about any new policies and developments that may affect them and crucially keep them informed on a continuing basis on their rights and responsibilities. It would be unreasonable for the department not to do this.”

I could not agree more. Where, then, were the letters to the women to inform them of the changes? This was 2002. The DWP has to take responsibility for that failure to communicate and, crucially, for the lack of time that women have had to prepare for an increase in their state pension age. Rather than recognising that women deserved to be communicated with directly, the DWP issued leaflets headlined “Equality in State Pension Age”. Can anybody in this Chamber remember those leaflets? No? I did not think so. I do not recall seeing them.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

You’re not a woman!

[Ian Blackford]

It is interesting that a Government Member is actually laughing about this, because that defines what the problem is. There are women who are really struggling, and the Government laugh. You should apologise and you should accept responsibility for this and stop demeaning the women—