Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am pleased to finally be able to take part in this debate on transitional state pension arrangements. As many hon. Members have pointed out, we have had many debates recently on the subject of women’s state pension age inequality. Now, however, we are talking about practical solutions and considering seriously transitional arrangements. Remember, this is transition—it is not forever and it will not cost £30 billion or £39 billion, or whatever other figure has been floating around the Chamber. Transitional payments will help all the women born in the 1950s who have suffered the double whammy of the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts. Those women have emailed, written, phoned, Facebooked and tweeted me, and many of my fellow MPs, on seeing their retirement plans disintegrate.

The basic issue here is fairness. All we are asking is for the women affected to be treated fairly. This group of women have not been communicated with properly. Many of them tell me that they either did not receive letters or that the letters they did receive were unclear. Contrary to the view held by some in this Chamber, the WASPI campaign is not asking to go back to receiving state pensions at 60. What they are asking for is simply fair treatment. These are women who work part time and who were not even eligible for their occupational pension schemes when they started work. These are women who gave up work to bring up children, which affected their personal occupational pension if they were lucky enough to have one. These are women who have worked in difficult conditions, many of whom have had to retire early because of ill health. These are women who, as well as bringing up children, are now shouldering the burden of caring for elderly relatives in their later lives. These women have all been through the doors of my surgeries in my constituency, and I am sure their story is familiar to all right hon. and hon. Members. My constituents frequently urge me to take this argument to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—[Interruption.] I have extreme difficulty doing so, because he has not attended a single one of the many debates we have had on this subject.

Jackie, one of my constituents, introduced herself to me as “June ’54 and furious!” She made the valid point that denying her access to her state pension until she is 66 also denies her entitlement to concessionary travel and the winter fuel allowance. Jackie started work in 1971, but had to take early retirement from the police service in order to care for an elderly relative.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), the shadow Secretary of State, has made six helpful suggestions about how fair transition could be put in place to help women such as Jackie. Let us stop prevaricating. I await the Minister’s response to those sensible and reasonable suggestions, which— I might add—have been supported by many Government Members. Let us help to turn Jackie from being “June ’54 and furious!” to “June ’54 and finally fairly transitioned”.