Pension Equality for Women

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his excellent work on this important and serious issue that is facing some women in this country born in the 1950s. Five and a half thousand women in Bedford borough are affected by the pension changes, which were drawn up with little or no notice, and with no time being allowed for people to make alternative plans for such a life-changing event. I was very pleased to hear last week that Bedford Borough Council voted unanimously to support those women through the WASPI campaign. Depriving people of the money they have worked for and ought to have been entitled to is one of the greatest injustices imposed on a large section of our society.

But it is not just about the injustice. Women from the brilliant Bedford WASPI group told me that they have been robbed of their money, their independence, their pride, their future and even their homes. Some of those women are here today. Many women are destitute. I know of one woman who is now living in sheltered accommodation with her mother, because it was especially women on their own without the safety net of a partner’s income who were simply unable to re-plan their lives with less than five—and sometimes less than two—years’ notice.

The women I spoke to told me they were opposed not to the pension age going up, but to the way it was handled. The first shift in pension age was bad, but the second time the goalposts were moved, under the coalition Government, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. One women told me that although she tried to carry on working, health problems got the better of her and she could not carry on. She said that decades of working and looking after an elderly parent left her with nothing more to give. Her story is a common one, which was why hearing the Government telling women in their 60s who had worked all their lives to get on their bike and find another job was yet another insult.

One woman told me she was particularly upset that WASPI women were pitted against the younger generation, and made to feel greedy, or branded as scroungers, for fighting for the money they had saved for at a time when young people could not even afford a home. But she said that her grandchildren were right behind the WASPI campaign because they knew that fighting for her rights was also fighting for their future rights. Divide and rule is not working on this issue, and the Government need to understand that young people also feel very strongly about this on behalf of their grandparents.

Another woman said that the whole experience had made her feel less of a human being and that only the support of the WASPI movement, and the knowledge that millions of women feel the same way, had helped her to cope. The Government have yet to come up with one good reason not to award a non-means-tested bridging pension until the women affected reach state pension age as well as compensation for those who have already reached state pension age.

The WASPI women are asking for less than they are due, and it is about time they were given it.