Women and the Economy

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I have worked in the care sector all my life, and I am frustrated with the lack of campaigning for better wages, as that would mean that women would not need to rely on tax credits.

Key decisions in the spending review will benefit men and women alike. The increase in free childcare will help mums and dads, and the introduction of a national living wage will help men and women on low incomes. The funding that we discussed in the previous debate on mental health services will also benefit men and women.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not because many other Members still want to speak. I am thankful that women still outlive men, and therefore the increase in the basic state pension will benefit women more than men—long may that continue. On women-only issues in the spending review, it cannot be denied that the investment of £1 billion to provide 15 to 30 hours of free childcare a week will benefit women. The introduction of tax-free childcare by 2017—that is up to £2,000 of childcare support per child per year for working families—will benefit women. Female employment is at a record high, and the gender pay gap has fallen to 9.4%—the lowest level since records began. We should be celebrating that, not criticising Members for achieving it.

The tampon tax has been much debated today. I am pleased that while the Chancellor negotiates with EU member states for the ability to zero-rate sanitary products, as he has pledged to do, the £5 million generated by the tax will be ring-fenced for women. The national living wage will benefit women—as we have heard, women in the care sector are disproportionately affected by low incomes—while 60% of the 660,000 individuals taken out of tax by the increase in the personal tax allowance will be women. I also welcome the £1.1 million investment from the superfast broadband roll-out programme that is helping to deliver the Swift project. I have been to sessions in my constituency where women just starting out in business are benefiting from that investment.

I could go on, but I will not, which will please Labour Members. If they want to be political, I am quite happy to be as well. I will not take any lectures from the Labour party, whose leader suggested that violence against women on the railways can be resolved with women-only carriages; from a party whose leader condones the segregation of women at public meetings; from a party whose leader was shamed into appointing women to the shadow Cabinet, and even then was selective in the positions he handed out; and from a party that uses all-women shortlists to force women into Parliament.

Talk is cheap. Labour Members should be supporting women, but this has been a wasted opportunity. The effective Opposition, the SNP, have really shamed Labour Members by raising important issues that we could have debated properly today. Talk is cheap, and the actions of Labour Members speak louder than words.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The motion asks the Government to conduct an urgent cumulative assessment of the impact of their policies on women since 2010 and to take the necessary remedial steps to mitigate any disproportionate burden on women. Nowhere can this be seen as strongly as in the impact of state pension age equalisation on women born in the 1950s. In 1995, the then Conservative Government set out a timetable to equalise the pension age for men and women at 65 so that, from April 2020, women born in April 1955 or later would get their pension at 65.

In May 2010, the coalition agreement stated that a review of the default retirement age would take place

“to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women”.

This pledge was broken when the coalition Government decided to accelerate the planned changes—a move that particularly hit women born in the 1950s. The changes brought about by the Pensions Act 2011 affect the lives of millions of women. It is not the niche issue that the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) talked about. Women born in the 1950s are unfairly bearing the burden and the personal cost of the increase in the state pension age, and I feel unashamedly political about standing up for them.

Speaking to “Channel 4 News” in May 2011 about the unfair consequences of the legislation, the director general of Saga said:

“We accept that the pension age will have to rise but it is the timing and the broken promise that we feel is unfair.”

She said that women

“may have made careful plans for retirement, only to have the Government pull the rug from under their feet.”

Ironically, she is now the Conservative Minister for Pensions. Earlier this year, she told me:

“I tried hard in 2011 but there is nothing more I can do I’m afraid. It is not in my power.”

Well, it is. As Minister for Pensions, she must recognise the injustice in the state pension age changes, which she well understood as a campaigner in 2011, particularly now that the former Pensions Minister has admitted that the Government made a bad decision.

During Second Reading of the Pensions Bill in 2011, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions repeatedly referred to “transitional arrangements”, but he never put in place any fair transitional arrangements. The financial journalist Paul Lewis has looked into this and other issues, including the question of when the women were notified. He has said:

“Millions of women had their state pension age delayed—in some cases twice and by up to six years in total—without proper notice. The Government did not write to any woman affected by the rise in pension ages for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995”.

The former Pensions Minister now admits it was not made clear to him that some people would have to wait an extra two years for their pension.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. My mother-in-law is in this category—she was not told. She left her job at what she expected to be a pensionable age, but has been left waiting a further three years before she can receive her pension. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have put nothing in place to support those older women back into work?

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed and I will come on to talk about their plight. It is amazing to me that the Pensions Minister realised what a bad decision he had made—he admitted that quite recently—but still more than 1.5 million women aged between 57 and 59 were not told until then that their state pension age would be rising. In the worst cases, women were told at 57 and a half that their pension age would rise from 60 to 66.

The Government have since said that anyone affected by a rising state pension age must have 10 years’ notice, while the Pensions Commission suggests 15 years’ notice. The journalist Paul Lewis concludes, however, that none of the 1950s-born women had even 10 years’ notice. Women who have planned for their retirement suddenly find, as my hon. Friend says, that they have to wait many more years—up to six years—before they can retire. They find themselves without a job, without a pension or pensioner benefits, and without money to live on.

Members have referred in the debate to the campaign group Women Against State Pension Inequality. They are not campaigning against equalisation, but they are opposed to the way the changes have been enacted and the lack of transitional protection for women born in the 1950s. My constituents have told me about how the changes are having a significant impact on their lives. Case after case that I have been told about shows how many women in their early 60s have health problems that stop them working, or that they need to give up work in order to care—we have talked a lot about care in this debate. I have a constituent forced to live off her savings after working and paying national insurance for 44 years; another is unemployed at age 61 and trying to live off £75 a week. I have spoken to women in their early 60s who have been forced on to the Work programme. They find this demeaning after 40 to 44 years of work. A WASPI campaigner called Marian contacted me. She told me she gave up work at age 62 to care for her mother and brother, both of whom have dementia. Her only source of income is a small private pension of £2,500. Her husband will now have to support her until she is 65.

The women I speak about today have worked hard and contributed to the system. Throughout their lives, this generation of women have been disadvantaged in the workplace in terms of pay because of their gender. Even now, women in their 60s earn 14% less than men. Now, they are once again being treated unfairly because of the way changes to the state pension have been enacted. Ministers must look at ways to provide adequate transitional protection. A number of Conservative Members have said that they support—I hope they do—the transitional protection that Ministers’ colleagues repeatedly mentioned in the debates on the Pensions Act in 2011.