State Pension Age (Women)

Debate between Julian Knight and Helen Goodman

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). I should like to praise the reasonableness of the Women Against State Pension Inequality—WASPI—campaign. Several campaigners have come to my constituency office, and they have put forward their arguments in a cogent, respectful and thoughtful manner.

Since 2010, this Government have been taking the difficult decisions necessary to get Britain’s deficit under control. This has often been contentious and involved many political disagreements with the Opposition. Since the Turner report, however, the one area on which Members on both sides of the House have in no small degree agreed is pensions. For more than a decade, MPs from all parties have been working together to tackle the challenges posed by an ageing population and to ensure the long-term financial security of elderly people. This quite unusual political consensus was both necessary and heartening in dealing with a long-term issue.

It is no secret that, without change, our current state pension arrangements will simply not be financially sustainable. People are living longer than ever: a teenager today can expect to live until the age of 90. That is to be celebrated, but it also imposes serious burdens on welfare systems that were designed in another age. In the last Parliament, the Government estimated the cost of abandoning state pension age reforms at a completely unaffordable £23 billion, the equivalent of putting 7p on income tax.

Much of this debate focuses on the impact of these measures on women, so perhaps we should reflect on how much this Government have done to improve the position of women in the pensions system.

[Helen Goodman]

Before the hon. Gentleman tells us that everything is okay, would he like to hear the experience of one of my constituents? She says:

“I have worked full time since leaving school at 16. I am now 61. I have worked through 10 years of kidney failure, dialysis and finally a kidney transplant. The effects have taken their toll. I cannot afford to retire without a state pension so I have another five years of my current life to look forward to, assuming my kidney does not fail or I die of something else.”

Surely that level of hardship is unacceptable.

[Julian Knight]

I thank the hon. Lady for putting the words into my mouth that everything was okay. I remind her that she is a member of the party that was in government from 1997 to 2010, and if there is anything amiss regarding the publicising of these changes, Labour Members ought to look to themselves in that respect.

The motion regrets that the Government have

“failed to address a lifetime of low pay and inequality faced by many women”.

I really do not recognise that. Let us consider two central planks of this Government’s policy—namely, raising personal allowances and increasing the minimum wage to the living wage. Both those initiatives benefit women tremendously. In addition, the Government are looking at options to reform pensions tax relief, which was left unaltered by the Labour Government.