Pensions

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. She has done so much in this area, a lot of it behind the scenes and a lot in public. She is a knowledgeable and experienced hand in these matters, and I am pleased to follow her speech.

I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing this debate. I wish to add just one or two contributions. The first thing I want to say to the Government is that this is quite a modest request. The case is powerful, but we are talking about further consideration. In her film the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, would make the point that the Government are waiting for this to go away. I do not think this will go away. I will certainly come to see the film. She needs to add a villain from the Treasury, and I cannot think of anybody sufficiently obnoxious off the top of my head, but I will send her a note in the morning. I think this was a mistake that was made by the Treasury in 2011. I was around at the time—I had been chairman of the Select Committee on work and pensions—and I think Parliament did not understand the consequences of what it was doing when it passed the 2011 Act.

This is a serious act of omission. It has been done by successive Governments. It is right to say that Steve Webb was in place at the time, but I think his hand was forced away from the 1995 decision, which was sensible, to the 2011 decision, which is now causing severe problems. The DWP is very good at creating policy but absolutely hopeless at delivery and implementation. I do not say this against the professionals in the department. Some of us are old enough to remember the controversy when housing benefit was introduced, then there was the Child Support Agency and now we have universal credit. We really must learn some lessons about some of the terrible mistakes we make in the translation of policy into delivery.

I was clear in 1995 from the report of the Pensions Commission that 15 years’ notice was the minimum required and that these changes should be made only once every 10 years. I was certain that that was a safe policy, that the journey had started and that things would turn out well. Since then it has to be said that the context has completely changed for everybody, but particularly for these women who have lost these pension years. With the economic crisis of 2008, and if we go forward with the Government’s policy of withdrawing from the European Union, growth levels and the family income and wages available to some of these households in retirement will get worse. There has been increased age-related morbidity across the generations and we obviously have a bigger population. The future is not getting any easier in terms of the economic background.

The point I really want to make more than any other is that the totality of the savings over the middle term, over a number of years, is £30 billion. Steve Webb asked for a proper sum of money to deal with this problem but only got a third of what he needed. It seems to me inconceivable that over a longer period of time, with that total saving of £30 billion, this cannot be mitigated in transition. Whether the WASPI campaigners are right to not settle for anything less than the full compensation—if I was them I would do the same—there is a strong case for looking at a negotiation with the Government that would settle for somewhat less. However, they cannot do that because the Government are not talking to them. It seems to me that the combination of the fact that £30 billion is being saved over time with the fact that the Government will not even discuss or defend their position—they will do nothing of the kind—is contrary to natural justice. As has been said in some of the powerful speeches from colleagues, it is the handling of the issue that makes this all worse. People are getting really angry for understandable reasons.

I support the WASPI campaign. It is deliberately going through the ombudsman, which I hope will bear fruit and lead to the further consideration that this Question this evening is calling for. The Government need to accept responsibility. This was a serious act of omission. I do not think the House of Commons in 2011 fully understood what it was doing, and there is a very powerful case now for further consideration of the WASPI claim. If the Government are not prepared to see the representatives of those who have lost these significant sums of money, their campaign will be supported in Parliament. The Government should not expect this to go away. I do not believe it will unless they come up with something sensible to put in place to get the transitional protection that the WASPI women are looking for.