Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Debate between Mark Durkan and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In common with others, I regret that much of the debate from the Dispatch Box was focused on fixing the blame rather than fixing the problem, but at least the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) put forward a six-pack of options, which he rightly asked the Government to consider. Let us remember that the salient point about the motion is that it

“calls on the Government to bring forward proposals for transitional arrangements for women adversely affected by the acceleration of the increase in the state pension age.”

That is logical, reasonable and compelling, which is why the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is prepared to support it. I ask some of his hon. Friends to join him in supporting it, not least those who valiantly fought over Equitable Life and called on the taxpayer to restore Equitable Life members to some position of equivalence. If they were prepared to fight for the Equitable Members Action Group and were indignant over Equitable Life, they should not be indifferent to the WASPI women and what they face. We should respond to them with justice.

It is not just a matter of a breach of trust and a breach of contract, because there is also the question of moral hazard. If Parliament says, “We can be quite capricious with the state pension”, we send out a signal to all the private pension providers that they can do what they want, that politicians will be in no place to reprimand them and that the regulator will not be able to interfere. We send out a very dangerous signal, too, to those younger people who were encouraged to have confidence and show responsibility in their pension planning. We send out a signal to them that what happened to their mothers shows that even when provision for pensions is made, people do not get what they thought they were going to get. It says that the pensions rules can be changed, so younger people will ask why bother with them—just see what they get when they get there.

We should not offer the mixture of conceit and deceit that we heard from some Conservative Members. We were told by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) that the matter is settled and therefore cannot be touched. When was it settled? It was settled by Parliament in 2011, and he argued that it was the settled will of Parliament, which cannot be touched. These are the same people who tell us about parliamentary sovereignty and how one Parliament cannot bind another. They tell us that they want to stand up to the EU all over the place, but they are of course hiding behind a completely false explanation of EU rules and EU requirements in defence of this injustice.

This is an intentional injustice that has been visited on these women. It is not just, as the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) tried to tell us, that a line has to be drawn somewhere. These are not just haphazard victims of a drive-by cut in the name of austerity; they have been carefully selected and calculated as the victims. Why? These women have been used to inequality and injustice all their lives; they have been on the receiving end of inequality in respect of gender pay gaps and denial of access to second pensions at a time when their male colleagues were given access to them. The aim now seems to be, “Let’s give them one more twist of injustice in the name of equalisation as they come to the end of their working lives.” That is an absolutely travesty; it offers people stone for bread. This Parliament should be doing better than that.

As for the “settled will”, legislation that is currently going through Parliament will change legislation that was passed in the last Parliament. The Financial Services Act 2012 and the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 were passed in the last Parliament, and they are being changed by legislation that is going through the House now. The Enterprise Bill is changing legislation that was passed in the last Parliament. The Trade Union Bill is changing legislation that was passed in the last Parliament. Yesterday we debated the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which, of course, is also changing legislation that was passed in the last Parliament. The Government can change legislation to introduce cuts, but they cannot change legislation to bring justice to people.

We should compare the present position with the position in 2011. What we have now are pension freedoms, and a tax windfall for the Treasury. The Government should bear in mind the new fiscal ambit that comes with those pension freedoms, and use it to introduce pension justice—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I call the shadow Minister.

Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill (Allocation of Time)

Debate between Mark Durkan and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not sure how far you are treating some of these arguments as relating to the matters of substance as opposed to procedure, but the Secretary of State talked long on those points, as did others.

Let us be clear: a couple of different arguments have been used as to why everybody should just pass this through today as a matter of urgency. One has been that if we do not scramble this through fast, the institutions are in danger of collapse. Who was bringing the institutions to the brink of collapse? It was the very people who are being celebrated as heroes. The SDLP never threatened to bring the institutions down; we never once on any of these issues in the last number of years have used the word “crisis” or threatened the existence of the institutions. We have never said we would make this a make-or-break issue and the institutions would crash if we did not get our way. Sinn Féin and the DUP have variably and respectively, and sometimes collectively, said that at different times over the past couple of years, but it was never the position of the SDLP. We have adhered to our position on welfare reform without at any stage threatening the institutions. The position of Sinn Féin and the DUP came to threaten the institutions—because, after all, who else can threaten the institutions or bring them to the point of collapse but those two parties?

The second argument in relation to the exigency is the money argument. We heard it repeated again in the last intervention. Let us remember: the money argument arose because the Treasury chose to respond to the Assembly’s failure to pass the legislation by imposing what it at one stage called fines and also called penalties—indeed, DUP Finance Ministers used those words as well—but later we were told, “No, you can’t call them fines or penalties; they are savings forgone.” The fact is that it was a Treasury tactic: “Unless you pass this legislation—this karaoke Bill—through the Assembly on the same terms as we had it in Westminster, we will fine the block grant.”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We will have these debates later. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, he is moving an amendment to the allocation of time motion, but we are in danger of opening up the entire debate at this stage, which I do not want to do, as I want to save something for the next part.

[Mark Durkan]

Yes, but I am partly answering points that the Secretary of State spent some time on and others made interventions on.

We must remember this point about the fines and the pressure that puts on the budget. It was the Treasury that chose to create a budget stress in the hope it would induce the Assembly to pass the legislation. That budget stress became a budget crisis, and that budget crisis in turn contributed to the political crisis which the Secretary of State now tells us will be resolved by this Bill and this programme motion.

I will not stray into the areas where we are seeking to amend the Bill through the amendments tabled for later—I hope we can discuss those in Committee—but I want to make the point that Members of this House should not be under the illusion that they have to adopt a procedure with a timetable motion in relation to this Bill that they would not adopt for anything else because it is safe to do so as it is in the name of taking forward the peace process or the “Fresh Start” agreement.

There are parties that support some parts of the “Fresh Start” agreement but not other parts, and there are parties that support the welfare reform changes but do not endorse the whole of the “Fresh Start” agreement. Other Members in this House from parties outside Northern Ireland should not think they have to turn their own position on welfare reform and the current Welfare Reform and Work Bill currently going through Westminster inside out as a way of supporting progress and stability in Northern Ireland. Progress and stability in Northern Ireland can easily be supported in the context of this House following its due procedures and not accepting the almost unprecedented provision that means in Committee nothing other than clauses stand part or Government amendments can be voted on.

It is wrong that we are circumscribed by time, and it is wrong that we are being muzzled. This is all courtesy of Sinn Féin. It is to make sure we cannot table amendments that capture some of the amendments we tabled when the Assembly Bill came forward earlier this year. They were rejected by a petition of concern tabled by the DUP, and they were rejected by the votes of Sinn Féin as well. [Interruption.] Yes, and Sinn Féin and the DUP voted down SDLP amendments to the Assembly Bill that—[Interruption.] Yes, they voted down amendments that were in the same spirit as the amendments the Conservatives had voted down in this House to the original Bill on welfare reform. The DUP voted down amendments and petitions of concern against amendments that were in the spirit of amendments it had supported in the original legislation, so it has turned it inside out, and that is up to it to do, and Sinn Féin.

No parties in this House need abandon their own positions. We should be able to take amendments in this House and vote on those amendments. The Government are in a compact with Sinn Féin and the DUP to make sure the amendments cannot be voted on. They do not want the embarrassment of the Tories having to vote down these same amendments that Sinn Féin voted down in the Assembly earlier this year: the picture of the Sinn Féin -Tory-DUP axis would then be complete because we would be able to show who had voted down which amendments consistently. The case would be that the Tories voted them down originally, then Sinn Féin and the DUP voted them down, and then the Tories voted them down again now. It is to avoid that picture. That is why we have this kangaroo parliamentary procedure that is being used.

From Sinn Féin, a party that in the past supported kangaroo courts, we now have a kangaroo parliamentary procedure whereby things were rushed through in the Assembly the other day by the legislative consent motion; and now, not only are measures being put through on a timetable motion here, but the rights to table amendments with a view to their being voted on are being supressed by this programme motion. Members should resist that by supporting the amendment.

The amendment to the programme motion will, if passed, not cost any time or add any delay, so it does not relate to any of the concerns that the Secretary of State raised. The programme motion could be passed with the amendment and there would be absolutely no jeopardy to the timetable that the Secretary of State has tried to impress upon the House.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Quite a few more hon. Members wish to speak and the Minister wants to come in at 9.40 pm, so if we could help each other, I would be grateful.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I wish to join others in acknowledging the strong case that members of the Treasury Committee have made on the issues addressed in new clause 1. Like others, I do not think that new clause 1, in itself, goes far enough in resolving some of the Bill’s deficiencies, but it is a commendable effort.

As we are dealing with a number of proposals that appear on the amendment paper under the heading “Governance of the Bank of England and the new regulatory structure”, there is a danger that we might make the mistake of thinking that all the provisions are about issues inside the beltway; we may think that they are all about parliamentary influence, scrutiny and the relationships between the Financial Policy Committee, the Bank of England and the Treasury and so on. Of course, as we heard in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), many of these provisions touch directly on issues that we thought we were discussing in the previous grouping in relation to consumer protection and the consumer interest.

I wish to discuss a number of the amendments in this group that I have tabled, particularly new clause 13. It is aimed at dealing with what seems to be a fairly gaping loophole in the Bill and relates to provisions in clause 25, on page 108, and the regime for consolidated supervision of the parent undertakings of financial institutions. The provisions in the Bill as they stand would mean that the only parent undertakings that will be regulated under consolidated supervision are those that were deemed to be financial institutions, whereas those that were not deemed to be financial institutions would be immune.