State Pension Age (Women)

Marcus Fysh Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

I have sympathy with people when their expectations change and I thank my constituents who have emailed me to highlight this issue. I shall start by looking at the background to it.

The longevity of our population is rising, which is a good thing. It is great to live longer and women live longer than men—

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Marcus Fysh]

Not at the moment.

Women on average have a healthier longevity and that is increasing at a greater rate than it is for men. As a nation we spend a massive and increasing amount on our healthcare system and on our pension system in order to allow as many people as possible a happy retirement.

It was in 1908 that the Liberal Government under Lloyd George brought in the first provisions—[Interruption.] I am certainly not blaming the Liberals for that. A great man, Mr Churchill, was involved too. The age at which the state pension could be claimed was set at 70, compared with the average longevity of 55 at that time. That gives us some idea of the changes that have taken place since. In 1995 the retirement ages were raised so that they would be equal as between women and men in the future. That was further examined in the mid-2000s by Lord Turner. There was cross-party support for those ages to be raised further, given the increases in longevity that I mentioned.

Under the coalition Government, when I was not in Parliament, a decision was taken, based on further increases in longevity, to raise the retirement age even faster for a few people. One of the principles behind all the recent changes was the affordability of the system overall. We have heard that it would cost £39 billion to reverse those changes. That liability would apply to all age groups, and it would be unfair for us to continue to burden younger generations with extra taxes in order to make more concessions than we have already.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Marcus Fysh]

Not at the moment.

At the time of the last decision in 2011 a concession of over £1 billion was made to help the age groups who are contacting us now.

I want to say a little about equality. I have two very young daughters and I am keen that they should have equal opportunities, as far as possible, with men of this nation in the workplace and as citizens. I shall highlight a few things that make me think that we as a Government are doing well on behalf of women. The introduction of a single tier state pension will have a good effect on women. It will be equally available to men and women, based on the same approach to national insurance.

[Nusrat Ghani]

My hon. Friend talks about equalisation of the state pension and about men and women living longer. Equalisation of the state pension age reflects the fact that women and men play an equal role in our society and in our economy.

[Marcus Fysh]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Equality is at the heart of what we are trying to do for women. One of the ways that we are trying to achieve that is by decreasing the gender pay gap. That will be helped by increasing the minimum wage, increasing the availability of jobs and increasing the personal tax allowance. We are pursuing many incentives and programmes that will allow women to participate successfully for a little longer than they may have expected.

The issue at the heart of this debate seems to be the extent to which women were given notice and therefore the ability to plan for their retirement. I am sympathetic to anyone going through a stressful personal situation, but we need to be responsible. It is hard to say who was contacted or who was not, but from what I have seen—obviously, I was not involved in any of the previous decisions—it seems that most people were given notice of the change, allowing them to plan.

I have some advice for the younger generations who might be listening to this debate. I have some experience in the pensions world. The main thing that people have to remember when investing for their retirement is that the earlier they start saving, the more money they will have at the end. That is because of the power of compound interest, which has a tremendous effect.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a wide-ranging speech. Will he join me in hoping that the Minister, in his closing remarks, will address the issue of communication with those who are working now and who hope to retire in the future, so that my hon. Friend’s young daughters and mine will know where they stand?

[Marcus Fysh]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, the very point on which I had intended to conclude my remarks. We have a duty to the young people of this nation to keep their taxes down so that they have as much scope as possible to plan for their retirement. They are already being asked to shoulder an unacceptable burden that was put on them by the Labour party. It would be entirely wrong to reopen a decision that was taken by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition back in 2011.