State Pension: Equalisation

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, the policy of merging and transferring pension pots will be addressed but, at the moment, there is a significant amount of increased regulation and changes in legislation for the pensions industry to cope with. By 2018, when auto-enrolment is fully rolled out, we will know much better what are the appropriate and required measures for automatic transfers.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will doubtless recall one of her contributions to Saga magazine where she wrote:

“A group of older women are very angry. Many of them have written to me, some have written to their MPs, and others say they don’t believe it is worthwhile writing to their MPs, as the Government will not listen to them anyway. They remember that it was the Conservative Government in 1995 who increased their pension age, which they quietly accepted, but they now feel taken advantage of and treated like a ‘soft target’ because they have been given such short notice of another major change. They feel the move is discriminatory and manifestly unfair”.

She went on:

“The plans demonstrate a lack of understanding of the realities of many of these women’s lives. They feel betrayed that the Conservatives have hit them a second time and by far more than men”.

Does the Minister stand by those words?

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, as I have said, this matter was properly and thoroughly debated by Parliament. All those arguments were put to both Houses of Parliament and a majority voted for the legislation more than four years ago. This afternoon, I checked quite carefully and it is clear that this issue was missing entirely from the Labour Party’s manifesto before the general election. No party committed to doing anything about the billions of pounds that it would cost to change any of these plans.