State Pension Age (Women)

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

A lot of the issues have already been covered. The issue of equalisation is totally accepted, but in response to a Government Member who is no longer in his place I should say that we did point out that the life expectancy increase is not equal. In parts of Scotland we have huge differences in life expectancy, which relates to wealth, in particular. Women who are lower paid, who are unlikely to have a decent pension, who have no chance of having any other kind of pension are exactly the ones who do not get this extended life expectancy.

We also heard from a Government Member that women were definitely written to and that maybe they chose to ignore it. However, we know from FOI 3231 that the information campaign was from 2009 to 2013; in other words, 14 years later. I am sad to challenge Labour Members, but the DWP in 2004, under a Labour Government, recognised from its survey that only 46% of women knew what was coming. For most of these women it is not an extension of a year or 18 months; it is literally a change from 60 to 66.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

One of my constituents from Strathaven contacted me this week to say that she had only heard about the changes through word of mouth and a web search. At 59, the Government website suggested she could retire at 62. That was then changed and put up to 64-and-a-half. The changes are unfair because they penalise people at the later stages, when they cannot make alternative arrangements.

[Dr Whitford]

We have heard from right across the Chamber about the lack of communication and the acceleration of the age extension, and the fact that women could do nothing about it. This is built on a generation of women who had a lifetime of poor pay. We need to think about that going forward.

Auto-enrolment does not cover the modern worker who has multiple mini-jobs, as they are called. Their combined earnings are not considered. We will therefore have another pension debate in another 30 years about the people who have been left with no pension because of current approaches to work. We know that the derived pension benefit from their husbands is not counted. We know that only 22% of women who retire this year will qualify for the full flat-rate pension. This is just unacceptable. We are talking about women who are often unemployed at 60. They are facing jobseeker’s allowance and multiple job applications. They do not qualify for free transport here in England, free prescriptions or any other benefits, such as cold weather fuel payments. For these women, this is a multiple and accelerating problem.

We have been asked by those on the Government Benches—they are now horrifically empty for such an important debate—to come up with a solution. I understand that HMRC is looking at the higher rate of pension relief, which may claw back £45 billion. That more than covers the £30 billion, which we are told would cover full transitional arrangements. High level tax relief is for the wealthiest people, those who this week, the first proper working week of the year, have already earned more than the average wage. Three-quarters of them are men. The route we should be following is to take away money that goes to people who probably, despite their long life expectancy, will not live long enough to spend it, and share it more equally with women who have been very badly treated. This is an issue of fairness and the Government have a responsibility to deal with it.