State Pension Age (Women)

Margaret Ferrier 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am sure the women listening to this debate will be glad that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Marcus Fysh) feels sympathy for them. When he lectures people about saving early in life, he might want to recall that many of the women we are talking about were barred from paying into secondary pension schemes.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on securing this debate. She should not have had to do so—there should have been a statement from the Government. She said the subject was complicated. People always hide behind the notion—the hon. Lady did not do so—that pensions are very complicated, but this is a very simple debate. This is not a pensions debate; it is a debate about public policy.

We have a Chancellor who has a long-term economic plan—Members might have heard about it. It was supposed to end the deficit in four years. It was a complete and utter flop. He cannot even put forward a plan that lasts four weeks. Last year he came to the House with a Budget that would have been detrimental to working people, to those facing welfare cuts and to pensions. A few weeks later he came back with £27 billion in his pocket, which he had found at the back of the settee. That was going to be the way forward. With one leap, he was free. But this morning he is all over the media telling us, “Whoa, hang on. You’ve got it wrong. We’re in a mess again. We’ve got to put the brake on again. People have to realise that we are still facing lots of austerity.”

To give them credit, Government Members who have spoken today have trotted out that line and said how hard it is going to be, as billions of pounds are needed to put right the existing wrongs. However, we have to accept that this is not like the weather. This is a political choice being imposed on the people of this country. The Government are knowingly and deliberately making women, rather than the wealthy, pay for the mistakes that resulted in the crash in 2008, caused not by the Labour party, but by the bankers and the global markets.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Just yesterday I read that the National Audit Office had identified that the cost of the UK’s complex weapons programme has increased to £14 billion a year over the past few years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is clear evidence that pensioners are suffering from the poor decisions and priorities of this Government?

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said that to put this right we would have to raise income tax by 7p. No, we would not. We could stop spending on other things. We could stop doing things like giving more money to the children of dead millionaires in inheritance tax bungs. We could stop giving businesses cuts in corporation tax at the same time as saying to poor people, “You’ve got to get even poorer.” The truth is that this has been a choice.

Two days ago, the salaries of the chief executives of the top 100 FTSE companies passed the average annual wage of working men and women. That is the level of inequality in this country. At the same time, we are saying to this group of women, “Sorry, you’ve got to carry the can for the failures of global capitalism.” By and large, Conservative Members simply do not care, because they do not understand the reality of life at the sharp end. My mother was one of the women who worked all her life. She was in and out of jobs where she was never allowed to join a pension scheme, and she was only able to build up a secondary pension scheme, so in the end she died in relative poverty. My mother died 15 years ago, but things have not really changed for the majority of women in this country, particularly the group we are talking about.

My constituent Elizabeth Ainsley wrote me a long, heartfelt letter from which I will quote only small bits. She says:

“My pensionable age has changed twice once in 1995 from 60 to 64…to bring women in line with men and then again when I was not notified until I was age 59 with 5 years to work to my retirement age that this had been changed from 64 to 66. This is just not enough time to prepare.”