State Pension Age

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Another day, another WASPI debate, albeit by another name. Still the Government remain intransigent, still we who know this is wrong remain hopeful and still the WASPI women fight on. Today, I ask the Minister not to talk about apprenticeship programmes for WASPI women. I ask him not to talk in a circuitous way about how we are all living longer, which is often trotted out—the great, “You know we’re all living longer, blah, blah, blah.” That bears no relation to what is being debated and what the WASPI women want to be debated, which is that women born in the 1950s were given little or no notice that their pensions would be delayed by several years.

That means retirement plans thrown into chaos, caring responsibilities presumably to be ignored and, for women who have worked their whole lives, financial hardship on a scale that is simply unacceptable. No cognisance seems to have been taken of the fact that this also hits the generation of women which suffered from pay inequality relative to their male counterparts, so this is a cruel double whammy—one that has hit 4,800 of my constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran very hard.

I am tired of the endless debates on this issue. Any fair-minded person would agree that this is a huge injustice. Let us get on and sort it out. The WASPI women, as I am sure the Minister knows, are not going to stop their campaign, because they are in the right and they know it. It is the Government who must change their position. I keep saying this: WASPI women are not going to go away, because there is nowhere for them to go. It is their money; they paid into their pensions in good faith and it is morally correct for the Government to pay out.

I know that the Minister knows, but I remind him that this is not pin money; these are pensions that those women have paid for and they need it for rent, food and basic necessities. The fact that the Government have so far turned a deaf ear to these women and all these cries of injustice shows that the Government have a brass neck. If this injustice is not addressed, the Government really should hang their heads in shame. We need to have a grown-up debate about pensions—of course we do—but until this is sorted out, we are whistling in the wind. I urge the Minister to put this outrage right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I want to make a little bit of progress.

I turn to the legislation passed over the last 22 years, during which time Labour, the coalition and the Conservatives have all been in government. Back in 1995, after two years of debate and consultation, the Government legislated to equalise the state pension age to eliminate gender inequalities in state pensions. That was a result of welcome increases in life expectancy, combined with the anticipated increase in the number of pensioners in the years to come.

[Patricia Gibson]

The Minister has talked about the number of people who are living longer, getting telegrams from the Queen on their 100th birthday and so on. That is fantastic, and I am sure that we are all happy about it, but can he not see that it does not help the women who have been told, with very little notice, that they will not get the pension they thought they would get at age 60? Telling them that they will live longer does not ease their hardship now.

[Guy Opperman]

Over the past 22 years, the Government have gone to significant lengths to both communicate and mitigate the nature of the state pension age changes, and that included a campaign in 2004 to educate people about their state pensions and extensive debates in the House of Commons on a multitude of occasions under a number of different Governments.