Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House notes the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report on Women’s State Pension age; and calls on the Government to deliver prompt compensation to women born in the 1950s who had their State Pension age raised.

I am delighted to have secured today’s debate on this very important issue. The motion urges the UK Government to deliver prompt compensation to women born in the 1950s who had their state pension age raised, following the report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman on the Department of Work and Pensions’ communication of changes to the state pension age for women. I extend my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. I lament the fact that it will not be possible to press the motion to a vote, as Tellers from both sides of the argument would be required for such a vote to be held.

Although I am disappointed that there will be no vote, there is nothing at all to prevent the Government from bringing forward such a vote in Government time. Indeed, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has invited the House to express a view by laying its report before Parliament, so that clearly needs to happen.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady address the prejudice touched on at the Work and Pensions Committee last week, namely that there has been an element of contributory negligence, in that the change was not a state secret—it was advertised and covered in the newspapers—and that some women who were approaching retirement or early retirement did not take proper notice? Will she knock that on the head?

[Patricia Gibson]

If the right hon. Gentleman reads the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report, he will see that it makes it very clear that action was not taken to inform women in the appropriate way that one would expect and, indeed, that the DWP was negligent in that regard.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend has started off powerfully, as I knew she would, knowing what a huge advocate she is for the WASPI women—women against state pension inequality. The right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made a helpful contribution. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is ludicrous for anyone to suggest that people—in this case, those women—should have found out about a change to their pension arrangements by happening to read advertisements in the correct newspaper on the correct day? Surely none of us should be planning our lives in that way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We know, do we not, that many impacted women found out at the last possible moment that their retirement age had been raised because they had not been given due notice to make plans in the way we would all expect? The DWP has been found to be negligent. I will say more about that in a moment.

The issue before us goes to the heart of our sense of justice and fairness and the social contract that the Government of the day have with their citizens. A whole generation of women had their pension age raised without the notice that they were entitled to expect, robbing them not just of tens of thousands of pounds in pension payments but of their retirement plans, of financial peace of mind and of the contract they believed that they had with the society in which they worked hard, paid their dues and fulfilled their responsibilities. They thought that they could enjoy some sort of retirement in later life—after all, they had earned it, had they not? The social contract is an agreement that we all think we should be able to rely on, but when the Government tear at the edges of that contract or rip it through as though it never existed, what retirement can any of us—or should any of us—count on?

I have met a range of women in the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign over a number of years. Of particular note are the Ayrshire WASPI group and the Cunninghame WASPI group, who represent WASPI women in my constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran and, indeed, WASPI women across Ayrshire. All women in the WASPI movement have distinguished themselves by their effective campaigning against the gross injustice that has been perpetrated against them, in the face of extreme provocation by a Government who have been tone deaf to their pleas for justice. I have been inspired by those women’s dignity, their resilience in the face of great financial hardship and their persistence, and by the compelling justice of their case.

I know many of the women involved; I know their stories. I note the hugely helpful insight provided by writer Dee Wild Kearney, the author of “Not Going Away!”, who joins us in the Gallery. Dee’s book, which is available in all good bookshops, outlines the struggles of some of the women involved in the campaign. I pay tribute to her work to disseminate this injustice to an even wider audience. I welcome all the WASPI women in the Public Gallery, some of whom have travelled a considerable distance to be here today. They are entitled to have their voices heard and their case answered.

When a whole generation of women find themselves victim to injustice on such a grand and heartbreaking scale, those MPs who champion their cause feel the weight of their frustrations, the weight of their hardships and their profound sense of having been screwed over. In turn, as MPs we feel our own frustration when faced with an intransigent Government who refuse to listen and appear wilfully blind to the facts.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

One of my constituents, who I have worked with since 2017, was one of the ombudsman’s six test cases. In fact, I am unable to make a speech today because I am meeting the ombudsman on behalf of my constituent at 2 pm. My hon. Friend is frustrated with the Government’s lack of action so far, but is she as disappointed and angry as I am about the Labour party’s refusal to back the WASPI women, despite promising tens of billions in compensation at the last election?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady proceeds, I note that 21 Members wish to participate in the debate. I understand that this is an important subject and I have no desire whatsoever to curtail either the debate or the right of hon. Members to intervene—I appreciate only too well the urgency of getting one’s point on the record—but if those on the Front Bench, or indeed any other hon. Member, give way too many times, not all will be called to speak. It is important that every hon. Member who wishes to speak can do so, and I therefore hope that we can resist the temptation to intervene whenever not necessary.

[Patricia Gibson]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I take on board your comments.

None of the UK Government’s intransigence has distracted from the dignity with which with the campaigners have conducted themselves over the long years that this swindle—and it is a swindle—has been carried out. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) raised a good point about our disappointment—some would say disgust—at the Labour party’s current position, but I will respond to his concerns in due course. After years of marching, lobbying, letter and email writing, attending surgeries and tireless campaigning, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has finally reported. The report vindicates the WASPI women and highlights the DWP’s failure to communicate, which

“negatively affected complainants’ sense of personal autonomy and control over their finances.”

The report found:

“the DWP did not adequately investigate and respond to complaints”.

In a damning condemnation, it highlighted that, despite all of that, the DWP

“will not take steps to put things right”

and that its refusal to do so was unacceptable. It concluded:

“Parliament needs now to act swiftly, and make sure a compensation scheme is established. We think this will provide women with the quickest route to remedy.”

This is surely one of the gravest injustices of our time, alongside the contaminated blood scandal and the Horizon scandal. It is another example of citizens having things done to them, which by every measure is wrong and unjust.

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing today’s debate. On behalf of the Midlothian WASPI women, I thank her for all her work, and all Members who have contributed to making this debate happen. Does she agree that the fact that these injustices happen over and over again shows how out of touch the Government in this place have become?

[Patricia Gibson]

One would be forgiven for thinking of a real disconnect between those we seek to serve and those who serve. When that disconnect repeatedly happens, and this systematic failure perpetrates such injustice, it is a very bad day for democracy. The difference between this case and the contaminated blood and Horizon scandals —both were awful injustices—is that the Government at least appear to wish to take action on those scandals, albeit very slowly. They appear to wish to make moves to address those injustices. In this case, of changing the state pension age with little or no notice, with the devastating consequences that it has brought, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has been moved to say:

“It is extremely rare that an organisation we investigate does not accept and act on our recommendations.”

It added that it has “no legal powers” to enforce compliance. A failure to comply with the ombudsman’s recommendations represents a constitutional gap in protecting the rights of citizens who have been failed by a public body, and in ensuring access to justice.

By laying this report, the PHSO has asked Parliament to intervene, to agree a mechanism for remedy and to hold the Government to account for its delivery. Here we are. We are holding the Government to account, while they and the incoming Labour Government enjoy a cosy “do nothing” consensus, sacrificing WASPI women on the bonfire of austerity that they have built together in a deliberate and conscious way.

For the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to issue such a statement is unprecedented, but it illustrates how shocking it is that this Government, supported by the loyal Opposition—loyal in ways we could only imagine—appear to be trying to ignore, obfuscate and gaslight their way out of this crisis, and it is a crisis for the women impacted. Neither Labour nor the Tories in government have even accepted the principle of financial redress for WASPI women. How do I know that? Because when the Secretary of State made a statement shortly after the long-awaited publication of this report, he made no mention of redress or compensation, but instead listed how great it currently is to be a pensioner in the United Kingdom because of the sheer munificence of the UK Government. The shadow Secretary of State’s response to that statement studiously avoided mentioning compensation as well, instead delivering a patronising yet supine eulogy on treating pensioners with dignity. Empty words do not pay bills, and no one is fooled by that nonsense.

Perhaps we should not be too surprised, since Labour has a track record of letting women down, particularly working-class women. After all, the Labour administration in Glasgow City Council spent £2.5 million of taxpayers’ money fighting equal pay claims by female council workers over 10 years. That shows beyond any reasonable doubt just how far Labour was prepared to go to fight equal pay—an incredible waste of public money. It took an SNP administration in Glasgow council to ensure that legal action was stopped and the pay claims were settled. That was a priority of the incoming SNP administration.

We know that Labour has a track record of denying justice to women, so we cannot expect much from that quarter, and anybody who does will be disappointed. However, the WASPI women I have spoken to feel particularly betrayed by Labour MPs and MSPs, who have spent the last umpteen years posing for photographs, smiling broadly alongside WASPI campaigners and pledging what turned out to be empty words of support, only to abandon them at the very moment they were vindicated by the ombudsman.

The same debate was held last week in the Scottish Parliament. Incredibly, Labour MSPs—who are not just Members of the Scottish Parliament but members of the Scottish branch office—abstained, as ordered by their high command bosses in London, on a motion that called for higher compensation to properly reflect the financial harm suffered by WASPI women. That motion sounds pretty reasonable to me—it would to anybody.

The sums mentioned in the ombudsman’s report are simply too low. I think most people would agree with that. They must be considered in the context that the UK Government have saved £181.4 billion purely by raising the state pension age of these women. So it is time to get real. The UK Government could perhaps examine the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) and go from there. Instead, all we have is silence from both the UK Government and the Labour Opposition.

The Leader of the Opposition has himself benefited from a special law passed in Parliament: the Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013. It relates to when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions in England, and his personal pension is protected. It is quite literally one law for him and another law for everybody else, especially if you are a WASPI woman and even more so if you are a working-class woman. It does not escape anyone’s notice that the Leader of the Opposition is now very silent on the injustice suffered by WASPI women and supports less generous pensions for everyone else. What a brass neck. What shameful hypocrisy. Maybe he is just so cocksure of a thumping Labour majority at the next election that he thinks WASPI women are expendable. Who knows?

Meanwhile, around 280,000 WASPI women who have been impacted have died since the start of the WASPI campaign. Around 6,000 have died since the publication of the ombudsman report. Why is there no urgency to address this injustice? No wonder WASPI women’s impatience and sense of injustice is fast turning into outright fury. Who could blame them? Because of the evasions and mis-directions used in previous debates, I wish to say to the Minister that this is not a debate about returning the retirement age back to 60; this is not a debate about the triple lock; and this is not a debate about anything except the injustice suffered by women born in the 1950s who have been vindicated by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

[Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. I think all of us in this Chamber have spoken to our WASPI women. I have Barbara and Lynn from Hartlepool here today. They informed me earlier that every 13 minutes a 1950s woman dies. That 280,000 is growing as we speak.

[Patricia Gibson]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point. All she does is emphasise how desperately urgent this matter is. Every 13 minutes a WASPI woman dies, so how many will die while we are having this debate? Another half dozen? Who knows? It may be more than that.

There are no more hiding places. It is time for swift compensation to be delivered to these women who have already endured far too much hardship and distress. The redress that they are accorded must reflect that suffering and there must be no barriers to accessing it for any of the women affected. No one can any longer deny the rightness of their compelling case. It is time to pay up. It is time to deliver. As the Minister and the Labour leadership must surely know by now, these women are not going away.

It is my hope that when the Minister gets to his feet he will have something meaningful to say to the House today, and to all the WASPI women who have already waited too long for justice. Perhaps he can at least set out some kind of timeframe for when the Government will bring forward redress proposals for those impacted. It is a travesty to drag this injustice out one moment longer. I hope the Minister agrees and does the right thing by this generation of women, or will these women continue to suffer while his Government pontificate? I hope not, but I say today to the Minister, and I say today to the WASPI women who are listening both at home and in the Public Gallery that the SNP unequivocally stands with you. We will not abandon you, as others have done.

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[Andrew Selous]

I agree. The issue of trust is really important, one that this House should not take lightly.

In my South West Bedfordshire constituency, it is estimated that there are 6,000 women in this situation. The cost of their compensation, at level 4, as recommended by the ombudsman, would be £6 million at the lower level, and at the upper level £17.7 million. If we extrapolate from that to the UK, I think the sum is £3.9 billion at the lower end and £11.5 billion at the upper end. We must be honest; I believe in honesty in politics. These are large sums—very large, when we add the amount that we will have to pay the postmasters and postmistresses, for whom we are also all campaigning, and the sums for the victims of the infected blood scandal, for whom most of us are also campaigning; and then there are other campaigns, such as the one relating to Equitable Life.

[Patricia Gibson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Selous]

I will because it is the hon. Lady, but this must be the last intervention.

[Patricia Gibson]

The hon. Gentleman talked about the way in which the bill for all these compensation schemes is mounting. Does that not merely underline the importance of competent government?

[Andrew Selous]

Of course it is best if Governments get these things right, but government is difficult, and Governments of all parties will make mistakes because they are human. However, I am making a different point on honesty about the overall Government finances. When I was taught economics, a long time ago, I was made aware of the notion of opportunity cost. We can only spend the same pound once, and if we are to spend billions on one thing, we must be honest about the other things on which we cannot spend money—things that the WASPI women may very much want—or the services we will have to cut, or the taxes we will have to raise.

I have tried to find out from the Library how the Treasury reserves work, and how we can account nationally for a contingency fund to deal with issues such as this. We just need a bit of honesty here, as a Parliament. If we are to do the right thing by the WASPI women—as I believe we should; I want us to, and we should do the same for those other groups—we need to consider a fund in the Treasury reserves that is dedicated to contingencies, although it might not be large enough to pay out on every cause in the way we would like; perhaps the nation would not be able to afford that. While I absolutely back the justice of the cause of the WASPI women, and while I think we should honour what the ombudsman said, or at least move towards doing that, we need to be honest about the nation’s finances and the other calls on the Exchequer.

Let me finish where I began—I will be brief, heeding Mr Deputy Speaker’s injunction. This comes back to the question of trust. We agree with the umpire not just when we are in favour of the umpire’s decision. Either we have an ombudsman or we do not, and while the ombudsman’s finding may be uncomfortable or inconvenient, it is neverthe- less the finding, and we should do the right thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

Let me end the debate by making a few observations.

The motion garnered unanimous support from Back-Bench speakers, which expressed the will of the House, but unfortunately the contributions from the Labour and Government Front Benches did not reflect that cross-party consensus. Justice is too important to be denied for fear of the price tag. I remind the House that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman concluded that ignoring the findings of the report would create an unprecedented constitutional gap in the protection of the rights of citizens who had been failed by a public body in respect of ensuring access to justice. That constitutional gap presents a danger to our very democracy.

What we have seen today is an apparent refusal from the Government Front Bench to accept the report’s findings, while, disappointingly, the Labour Front Bench continues to refuse to make any commitment to the WASPI women. That is why Labour Members of the Scottish Parliament were ordered to abstain on calls for compensation last week. I note that the tone of the response from the Labour Front Bench to this crisis—for it is a crisis—is entirely different from the tone of Labour Front Benchers when they speak of the infected blood scandal and the Horizon calamity. It is disappointing that the UK Government’s response takes us no further forward, and it is disappointing that the same applies to the Labour Front Bench. We have heard about considering, engaging, reflecting; what we have not heard about is any action, or any timeframe for action. It seems that the cosy, “do nothing” consensus between the Front Benches continues, which means that the campaign for justice for WASPI women—despite being vindicated by the ombudsman—must also continue.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report on Women’s State Pension age; and calls on the Government to deliver prompt compensation to women born in the 1950s who had their State Pension age raised.

Women’s State Pension Age

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s question. Let me reassure her, as I have just reassured the House, that there will be no undue delay in our approach to this matter. We engaged fully with the ombudsman— that included more than 1,000 pages of evidence and a full commentary in respect of the previous interim report that it published. This report is more than 100 pages in length and it is very detailed, so it is only right that we do, in an appropriate manner, give it the due attention that it deserves.

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

The timid response from the Labour party is truly shocking. Regardless of what we have just heard, WASPI women have at long last been vindicated, after five long years, by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report. Some 3.8 million women were impacted, of whom 270,000 have died without ever receiving their rightful pension.

Despite what the Secretary of State says, the verdict of the ombudsman’s report on the Department for Work and Pensions is damning and unequivocal, and weasel words will not change that. Women born in the 1950s had their pension age raised with little or no notice, and there have been failings at every turn by successive UK Governments. The report states that these women are owed compensation; that the DWP has refused to comply and must be held accountable for doing so; and that there was a failure to adequately inform women of the state pension age change. Those failures have had a devastating impact on lives, retirements and the financial and emotional wellbeing of WASPI women. Many have been reduced to poverty after being robbed of tens of thousands of pounds of pension, and that suffering has been caused by and is the responsibility of this broken Westminster system and this cosy Westminster consensus.

Financial redress is vital for these women and is in the interests of justice. Clearly Labour is not interested in that, but what we need from the Government is a commitment to prompt compensation for these women—with no barriers erected to prevent access to it—that recognises their financial loss and distress. We cannot have a situation where WASPI women have their campaign for justice vindicated and yet continue to be ignored. Any attempt to do that will rightfully result in a backlash.

We in the SNP stand shoulder to shoulder with these women, who have been abandoned and betrayed by the UK Government and the future Labour Government. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what it will take to compensate these women? Do we need another TV drama to embarrass and shame the Government into doing the right thing? These women are not going away but the longer this injustice is left unresolved, the greater the number of WASPI women who will die without seeing their pension—shame on this place.

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady refers to “doing the right thing”. Doing the right thing by the people the hon. Lady describes is to look very closely, carefully and diligently at the report. It has been five years in gestation. It is detailed, runs to 100 pages and draws upon a vast reservoir of evidence. It is only right and proper, given that the report was published on Thursday and today is Monday, for all of us to have time to properly consider its findings. [Interruption.]

The hon. Lady refers to the general situation of pensioners. All I can say is that I am pleased and reassured that pensions generally are a reserved matter. We have been able to increase the state pension, last year by 10.1% and this coming year by 8.5%. We have pressed hard on promoting pension credit for poorer pensioners. We had a cost of living payment. Because it is a reserved matter, this Government were able to provide £300 to pensioners last November, alongside their winter fuel payments. As a consequence of that—[Interruption.]

State Pension Changes: Women

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

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

I am delighted to participate in this debate and, like so many other speakers, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing it forward. I also pay tribute to the WASPI women who have campaigned so very hard and with so much dignity and determination, and in particular to the Ayrshire and Cunninghame WASPI campaigners, whose resilience and strength in their quest for justice has been truly inspirational, especially in the face of ongoing extreme provocation through the inaction and intransigence of the UK Government on this important issue of social justice.

The UK Government have a moral duty to deliver the justice that the WASPI women need and deserve, and we need that to happen urgently. There are 10 clear and perfectly reasonable asks from the WASPI campaign to reach a fair conclusion for the women affected, all of which my party and I fully support. I do not have time to list them today, but the asks are clear and reasonable and should not in any way be controversial.

For years, the women impacted have been left not just in limbo, but in financial distress and poverty, navigating what ought to have been their retirement years after a lifetime of work, stripped of their deserved dignity in retirement. It has caused untold emotional distress. For five long years, the WASPI women have waited for the ombudsman’s investigation to end and for its final report and adjudication to be published, during which time an estimated 260,000 women have died while waiting. That is tragic, utterly scandalous and completely indefensible.

As every speaker today has said, the rightful compensation should be delivered promptly; it must be meaningful and reflect the hardship, distress and injustice suffered by the women, and it must take into account the significant sums wrongly withheld from them. There must be no more obfuscation, avoidance or excuses. The UK Government must at long last deliver for the women. There are no more hiding places.

Like everyone in the debate today, I am very angry at hearing over the years about how WASPI women have had their retirement plans upended and about the hardship they have been thrown into. That has been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, with soaring food and energy prices, rising interest rates and higher mortgage payments. Injustices have been worsened by appalling Government incompetence and mismanagement, as well as Government arrogance and a tone-deaf attitude to WASPI campaigners.

I draw the Minister’s attention again to the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), which would require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for a compensation scheme for women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1960 inclusive who have been affected by the increase in the state pension age. Having robbed women of their rightful pension, the Government, as everybody has urged them to do today, should turn their attention to putting that right, because WASPI women feel that they have been robbed. To govern is to choose and good Governments must have justice at their core. The WASPI women, the victims of the Horizon scandal and those impacted by contaminated blood would not agree that this Government have justice at their core—why on earth would they? When Governments make mistakes, as sometimes happens, they need to be big enough and brave and decent enough to put those injustices right.

The Government must at long last urgently recompense the WASPI women, who have been robbed of their rightful retirement after a lifetime of pay discrimination. Then, they must turn their attention to pensioner poverty in general and reform our current pension system, which is not fit for purpose. Any talk of raising the retirement age further must stop because, we know that raising the retirement age has a disproportionate impact on people on lower pay and of lower socioeconomic status. We need an independent savings and pension commission without delay.

The ombudsman has been clear that the women have suffered from maladministration and injustice, so there can be no argument. There is no place left for the UK Government to hide. WASPI women deserve the retirement for which they worked all their lives. Everyone deserves dignity in retirement. That should not be a controversial statement. It is time for delivery because WASPI women will not, cannot, must not and should not go away. The Government must sort this out urgently.

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[Gill Furniss]

I believe I have already answered that. I am not here to announce our manifesto. I am here to debate like those who have already and I am here to listen, but I cannot announce our manifesto.

[Patricia Gibson]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she has been very generous. I just want to ask her on a personal level—forget the Labour party, forget the Government, forget all of that—

[Gill Furniss]

Oh yes, that is going to happen.

[Patricia Gibson]

On a personal level, does she think that WASPI women should receive the full compensation they are due?

[Gill Furniss]

As I said, I am not going to announce our manifesto commitment. Like the hon. Lady, I am here to press the Government who are now in power and have the ability to act. [Interruption.] As a WASPI woman, the hon. Lady would probably be able to guess, would she not? That is all I will say on that subject at the moment.

Two thirds of pensioners living in poverty are women. For many of us, a lifetime of inequalities will continue into retirement. The sadness of the situation lies in how many WASPI women have lost their lives during the time the Government have wasted not doing what they should do. Many women left their careers to look after elderly relatives or to cope after years of manual work, safe in the knowledge that they could get by on their savings for a handful of years until they reached their state pension on turning 60, but found to their horror that their state pension had changed, seemingly without warning.

Over the years, I have heard harrowing stories from both constituents and friends who are truly struggling, torn between whether to heat or to eat and unable to cope with the costs of their mortgage or rent. Pensioners are among those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis, and the Government’s failure to get a grip on the situation has led to rampant inflation and food prices spiralling out of control.

Although I support the policy of state pension age equalisation, it is painfully clear that the way in which it was carried out was shambolic at best. Groups such as WASPI were formed not to reverse the policy of state pension age equalisation, but to mitigate its effects. I commend the group for its work in securing an investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and its subsequent legal victories, including securing changes to the report. As we speak, the PHSO is still investigating actively. Although I do not wish to speculate on what their findings might be, it is a fact that they found that the DWP committed maladministration in how it decided to inform 1950s-born women of the changes.

I will always listen to and engage respectfully with campaigners fighting to right historical injustices, from WASPI women to the Allied Steel and Wire workers. Although I have not been in my role long, I have met representatives of the 1950s-born women on multiple occasions, and I had already met them at previous Labour party conferences. I will be honoured to continue going forward with them and keeping that dialogue open over the coming months and beyond.

I know that the Minister, like me, has been in his role for only several months, but I am sure it is apparent to him that the injustice these women have faced is clear. The poverty that many of them continue to face is also clear. These women desperately need a resolution to the maladministration to which they have been subjected. I therefore urge the Minister to act now to put that injustice right as quickly as possible, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with the WASPI women going forward.

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[Paul Maynard]

I very much hear what the hon. Lady says. The whole point of the ombudsman’s investigations is to determine the outcome of that process and how justice is to be delivered.

[Patricia Gibson]

As has happened with other judgments in a legal context, will the Minister commit his Government at the very minimum to implementing the judgment of the ombudsman? Or will they try to fight it, obfuscate and kick it into the long grass?

[Paul Maynard]

I am sure the hon. Lady will appreciate the principle that until a final report is published and until we know the contents of that report, I—as a Government Minister with a duty to manage public money properly—cannot make any such commitment as she describes.

Work Capability Assessment Consultation

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Not at all, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have set out very clearly the principled reason why we are bringing forward these measures. As the hon. Gentleman will know, when it comes to more disabled people moving into the workforce, we set a target for the 10-year period from 2017 to see a million more disabled people in employment. We broke that target in half that time, reaching 1.3 million in addition after just five years.

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

The number of people who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness has reached a record high of 2.55 million, which is very concerning. Given the Secretary of State’s fanfare today, what level of reduction in those figures would he measure as a success in supporting disabled people into secure and sustainable employment? What specific improvements does he envisage to the sorely inadequate Access to Work scheme to prevent the disability employment gap widening even further?

[Mel Stride]

I have addressed the issue of Access to Work—what a significant programme it is and the recent improvements in the processing of those particular awards. On economic inactivity, I make two points. First, compared with the EU, the OECD and the G7, economic activity overall is below the average across those different groups. Secondly, it has declined by about 360,000 since the peak that occurred during the pandemic, and that in substantial part is due to the policies of this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

4. What recent estimate he has made of the number of pensioners in poverty.

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

19. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the number of pensioners living in poverty.

[Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)]

21. What recent estimate he has made of the number of pensioners in poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Trott]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s raising that case. I encourage her—I am sure she has already—to check whether her constituent would be eligible for housing benefit in her constituency. That is not necessarily linked to pension credit, although it automatically passports. We are doing other things to support pensioners in those situations—the pensioner cost of living payment was received by 8 million pensioner households over the winter, and will be repeated this year.

[Patricia Gibson]

The UK already has the lowest state pension as a proportion of pre-retirement wages in north-west Europe. Independent Age has highlighted that 5% of pensioner couples and 19% of single pensioners have no source of income other than state pension or any associated potential benefits. Will the Minister finally take action to address pensioner poverty and shockingly low state pensions relative to most of Europe?

[Laura Trott]

We challenge those figures, as the hon. Lady knows. I point her to the record increase in state pension that we have just introduced—10.1% for both the state pension and pension credit. That will make a real difference to pensioner poverty levels, alongside the cost of living payments that are going out this year—£900 for pensioners on pension credit and £300 for all pensioner households.

State Pension Age: Review

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. She is quite right: we have stood by our pensioners. There will be a further £300 cost of living payment to pensioners alongside the winter fuel allowance. We are encouraging as many pensioners as possible who qualify to apply for pension credit, which is worth £3,500 on average. That, in turn, passports pensioners on to £900 of payments in three instalments over the coming year.

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

People in France are taking to the streets to protest against proposals to raise the state pension age to 64, yet in the UK people are expected to simply accept, despite today’s announcement, that the pension age should continue to rise, perhaps even to 70 or older by the mid-2050s. Given the poverty into which women born in the 1950s were thrown when their pension age was raised with little or no notice, and the fact that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has warned of a “pensioner poverty time bomb”, can the Secretary of State explain what consideration is given to rising levels of pensioner poverty—it is currently at 2.1 million, although he is seeking to deny that—when decisions are made about raising the state pension age?

[Mel Stride]

I set out in my previous response a number of the measures the Government have taken to make sure we look after our pensioners. I have also made it clear that since 2009-10, pensioner poverty has decreased.

Support for Women in Poverty

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing this debate forward; he is something of a legendary season ticket holder for Westminster Hall.

The ongoing cost of living crisis has no end in sight and is wreaking terrible damage on household incomes, families and even relationships across the United Kingdom. Particularly shameful is in-work poverty, when people are going out to work day in, day out and still cannot meet all the financial demands that they face.

We know that women are more likely to be living in poverty. They are more likely to be in lower-paid jobs, more likely than their male counterparts to be single parents, more likely to have caring responsibilities and even more likely to rely on social security. We also know that women are much more impacted by austerity measures, as they are more likely to rely to a greater degree on public services, which themselves are already under great pressure.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that families with younger children and lone-parent families, which are predominantly headed by women, face a disproportionate risk of poverty. Having younger children impacts on a parent’s ability to undertake paid work, the hours they can work and their pay, although it is important to say at this juncture that raising a child or children is work—something that often goes unrecognised.

Of course, women being able to undertake paid work when they have young children must be an option open to everyone who chooses to take it. Childcare has an important role to play here. Scotland is leading the way in childcare provision across the UK, although there is still more to do: there is no room for complacency. Scotland provides up to 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare a year—about 30 hours a week for three or four-year-olds, with some two-year-olds also eligible. In England, three and four-year-olds can access only around 570 free hours a year, which is about 15 hours a week.

We had a lot of fanfare around childcare in the recent Budget, but it does not really amount to much because it will be at least 18 months before it can happen and it was not accompanied by any detailed plan about increasing staff levels or infrastructure. Some people have said, quite cynically, that the reason for the announcement was less about substance than about what can be put on an election leaflet, which would be really sad if it were true.

The gender pay gap is another aspect that we need to think about when we are talking about women in poverty. It stands at around 15%, which widens dramatically when women have children. One way to close the gender pay gap—I know the Minister will be listening to this—is to mandate employers to report on the issue. It is, if you like Mr Sharma, effectively naming and shaming, putting the onus on employers to explain the gender pay gap in their organisations.

I am once again going to make a plea to the Minister to deliver a real living wage for workers, instead of the wee pretendy national living wage. It is both misnamed and misleading, since it is not based on the cost of living.

In addition to helping to support women in poverty, the UK Government must recognise that the policy of making single payments of universal credit to households can increase inequality in the welfare system and act as an enabler of domestic abuse or financial coercion. The Scottish Government continue to work with the UK Government to deliver split payments. I know that split payments are available in certain cases, but we really must ensure that we keep pushing so that it becomes the norm, so that we can protect more women financially.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Economic abuse is a term that has only begun to creep into our vocabulary in recent years, and it is different from financial abuse because it is a restriction of access to resources alongside money, and disproportionately impacts women. Does the hon. Lady agree that there is a great deal of work to be done to raise awareness of that problem, particularly for women who may be victims but do not realise?

[Patricia Gibson]

Absolutely. Abuse becomes the norm for too many women if they have suffered it over many years, regardless of what form that abuse may take. So, yes, we really need to raise awareness. I think that automatic split payments for universal credit, unless otherwise specifically requested, is one of the ways that we could help to protect women from financial control.

I also ask the Minister to study closely the Scottish Government’s Scottish child payment, which is now delivering £25 per week, per child, for those on the lowest incomes. It is projected that it will lift 50,000 children out of poverty in 2023-24. It has been hailed as “a game changer” by anti-poverty charities, backed up, as it is, with £442 million of funding from the Scottish Government in the next financial year. While the Scottish Government are doing all they can to support household incomes—despite an increase in the block grant of a miserly 0.6%—they do so with one hand tied behind their backs, shackled, as they are, to this broken system.

Of course, as the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned, there is also the gender pension gap. In old age, women are likely to be poorer than their male counterparts. Of course, that is easy to understand, because women are more likely to have had breaks in their working lives to raise children or undertake caring responsibilities, more likely to have been on low pay in their working lives, and more likely to have undertaken part-time work. As a result, women will suffer greater poverty in old age, living longer and suffering more years of poor health.

Age UK has shown that one in five women pensioners were living in poverty. Indeed, research shows that women, on average, would have to work an additional 16 years to retire with the same pension as men. Many of us have campaigned on the issue of the gender pension gap and are still waiting for the UK Government to expand auto-enrolment by removing the earnings threshold, a fairly simple step that would have an impact on women’s pensions.

We cannot talk about women in poverty without acknowledging the great injustice inflicted on women born in the 1950s, who were robbed of their pensions and had their retirement plans thrown into chaos when the retirement age was raised with little or no notice, depriving them of tens of thousands of pounds of their rightful pensions. I pay tribute to the dogged determination of the WASPI women to campaign against the injustice they have suffered. As a result of that injustice, many have been thrown into poverty after a lifetime of low pay. Many have faced financial ruin, and, worse, many have died due to ill health without ever receiving their rightful pension.

While we are debating women in poverty, it has to be said that there is a widespread view that the way in which those women have been cruelly treated would never have happened to men. The truth is that those women were seen as an easy target for a Government wishing to cut spending, which is shameful. The fact that a whole generation of women had their retirement age increased with little or no notice is beyond shocking. Alongside that came poverty, indignity and hardship, which those women will not easily forgive. It would never have happened to a whole generation of men.

There are a number of things that this Government could do, and I urge the Minister to work with the WASPI women to work out how they can be compensated when the ruling on the matter is made. There are a number of things that the Government could do to support women in poverty. They could do more, but they are not. The UK Government control 85% of welfare spending, so I urge the Minister to use her office to ensure that the powers that lie with the UK Government are used judiciously to support women living in poverty. I have set out some of the ways the Minister might consider doing that; I hope that she takes note.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s point, which I shall take back to the Department forthwith. I hope that that pleases him.

[Patricia Gibson]

I am prompted to intervene by the comment from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In my constituency, Money Matters is an organisation that offers a free, confidential, comprehensive service by providing benefit checks to all constituents who are concerned about making ends meet. Does the Minister agree that the DWP is best placed to carry out those comprehensive benefit checks to make sure that people are receiving their full entitlement of support?

[Mims Davies]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. Interestingly, though, people do not particularly want to be labelled. Sometimes it is hard to make people understand that they are entitled. Alongside DWP’s responsibility, we all have a responsibility in respect of that, through our constituency surgeries and through the third sector. It is a group responsibility, although I absolutely see her point.

There will be further accessible radio, print and digital advertising to make sure that we reach people who may not be online, as the hon. Member for Strangford noted. On his point about ethnic minority women entering and advancing in the workforce, that is an issue I am absolutely passionate about—if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. A recent roundtable at No. 10 very much focused on that issue.

At the end of 2022, there were more than 2 million ethnic minority women in employment. That has risen from more than 1 million in 2010—a 79.6% increase. We know that some ethnic minority women can face specific and challenging cultural barriers to moving into and thriving in employment. Therefore, our outreach work links up with organisations and employers to help those furthest away from the labour market to move into employment.

I was recently in Birmingham, a brilliant area for reaching out to those groups and working to understand the opportunities, where there is support with work experience to really help to build up confidence and employability. We are rolling out learning from a proof of concept, targeted at ethnic minority women, who may fail to engage and thrive in the labour market for many cultural and traditional reasons. In four local authority areas, jobcentres have appointed a women’s community co-ordinator, offering wraparound support to help women with an ethnic minority background to thrive in employment, and we are looking to extend that further.

The hon. Member for Strangford spoke delicately about sex for rent and other behaviours that some women may feel that they need to engage in to secure themselves. That is a focus of my colleague in the Home Office, the Minister for Safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines). When I was there very briefly, we took some steps to focus on the challenges and why people might feel pushed into something such as that.

I think I have answered most of the questions, and I will make a little progress with my speech. Northern Ireland has the second lowest unemployment rate in the UK at 2.4%, which is quite remarkable—a whole 1% lower than the UK average. As we know, work is the best way to earn more and move out of poverty, and that is reflected in the two statistics of low poverty and low unemployment. I take the point that for people for whom the barriers are highest, that probably makes no difference, and that is where we need to put our focus.

I was delighted to see that our interventions in the cost of living Bill—the Social Security (Additional Payments) (No. 2) Bill—received Royal Assent today; we are, again, focusing on the most vulnerable. I reiterate our absolute commitment to a sustainable, long-term approach to tackling poverty and better using the welfare system. In this coming financial year, we are uprating all benefits and state pensions by 10.1%. To increase the number of households who can benefit from those decisions, the benefit cap level is also increasing by the same amount.

A key area for us at DWP is focusing on low-paid work. We want to give people a range of options to help them to be better off, boost their skills and gain interview assistance, whether it is through our 50-plus interventions or by tackling additional barriers, disabilities or health conditions and extending our support through jobcentres.

Next month, the national living wage will be increased by 9.7% to £10.42 an hour, and that will benefit more than 2 million low-paid workers. That represents an increase of more than £1,600 in the annual earnings of a full-time worker who receives the national living wage.

The hon. Member for Wirral South spoke about childcare and the barriers to parents returning to work. The Budget measures and all those other things are being done at once. One of the challenges she laid down for me and my Department was to focus on the impact. She asked about the evaluations, which I am happy to share with her, and I will write to her further with some of those responses.

Members will be pleased to know that at the Budget, we announced an extension of the existing redundancy protection offered during maternity leave so that it will also apply to pregnant women and to new parents on their return from maternity or parental leave. It will provide security to an estimated half a million more people at any one time.

I am conscious that I have spoken for some time, but there was a lot to cover; I appreciate Members’ forbearance. The Government are fully committed to providing opportunities for women across the whole United Kingdom so that they can be successful in whatever they do. We want them to flourish and not be impeded by unfair and unjust barriers. We will continue to ensure that our support is targeted effectively to provide stability and certainty for everyone in these challenging times.

I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to respond, and to discuss the support available to women to lift them out of poverty and help them and their families lead fulfilling, productive and rewarding lives.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

First, I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I will be making some remarks about public sector pay.

In this House a couple of years ago, I made a comparison that the Government were rather like those wicked characters the Warleggans in the period drama “Poldark”. I did not quite realise that that was a premonition on my part, because once again we have a Budget that benefits the rich on the backs of the very poor. The real issue here is what the Budget does not say and the huge disappointment it was.

Ministers confirmed this week that they are reneging on the promise given to me three years ago to publish the Department for Work and Pensions review of the factors driving food bank usage. The Chancellor referred repeatedly in his speech to the Prime Minister’s ambitions and objectives. One thing that the Chancellor did not mention was the Prime Minister’s stated wish to eliminate the need for food banks. Why no mention? Why no review? Why no costed plan to deliver on that particular ambition? The most vulnerable yet again are being failed by the Government and by the state. What possible reason or reasons can there be for not publishing what should be vital research to address the very factors that cause too many of our citizens across these islands to turn to food aid provision? Is it because the very factors that do so are the responsibility of the Government?

As we have been reminded by the leader of the Public and Commercial Services Union, of which I am the parliamentary chair, more than 40,000 civil servants—people on the Government’s own payroll—are having to resort to food aid provision. We know that many of those relying on it are people who have received a sanction from the Department for Work and Pensions, but we also know that some who are using it actually work for the Department, and are themselves responsible for and employed in delivering benefits to the poorest. Yet the Budget tells us in no uncertain terms that more people, not fewer, will be sanctioned. It is hard to reach any conclusion other than that the failure by Ministers to publish the Department’s own research on food bank use is due to decisions made by Ministers past and, I regret to say, present.

We had an exchange with the Secretary of State about sanctions, during which he said that there were some circumstances in which they were appropriate. However, we know from the Government’s own figures that the number of sanctions has skyrocketed in the last year. In response to recent written parliamentary questions, the Department has said it “would incur disproportionate cost”—yes, the answer to a written question contains the words “disproportionate cost”; I know that some Members will find that unusual—to find out how many children were living in households where a sanction had been applied, how many people living in sanctioned households were receiving hardship payments, how many people with a sanction had a medical condition, or how many people had been in hospital or attending a medical appointment when they were deemed to have failed to comply and were therefore sanctioned.

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

My hon. Friend is talking about the impact and the scale of sanctions. Does he agree that the people who are sanctioned are pushed further and further into poverty, which goes against the Government’s own stated objective of getting people into work? The further into poverty people are, the more difficult it is for them to enter the workplace.

[Chris Stephens]

That is exactly what happens. What is also happening is that people who receive sanctions then miss out on cost of living payments, so they incur not just one punishment but a double punishment—and that, too, is pushing people into poverty.

Raising the State Pension Age to 68

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of raising the State Pension age to 68.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing the time for this debate, and Members for staying here on what I know is a tricky day for travelling. Some people may have somewhere more exciting to get to later in the evening, and I suspect we will not be able to drag this out until 7 o’clock, but you never know. There is plenty to talk about on pensions, and we can but try.

I wanted to hold this debate because the Government have recently received the periodic review of the state pension age from Baroness Neville-Rolfe. They have not yet published that review, but we have been seeing stories in the media suggesting that there may be an announcement in the Budget of a change in date for the increase in the state pension age to 68 from 2044 to sometime in the 2030s. I should probably declare an interest in that, depending exactly when that choice is made, it may change my own state pension date. That is on the record, but I have no idea what year the Government are thinking about.

I hesitate to say it, but this is actually a really important decision that will have a very significant impact on a lot of people. It needs to be made very carefully, and with very careful consideration of the impacts on people of different genders, backgrounds and occupations and on those in different parts of the country. Its impact for a manual worker will be very different from that for a professional, or someone living in an area with much lower life expectancy than, say, in the south-east of this country, and it is the same for those who have had a high-earning career rather than a lower-earning one. So it is quite a hard thing to get right, as various studies have shown. The other reason to be very careful is that the whole success of the pension regime depends on certainty and predictability, and if people start to think that nothing is certain or predictable, then they cannot have confidence, the whole basis on which we save for our retirement starts to become unclear and people start showing behaviours that we would much rather they did not show.

I actually support—I did support and I still support—the position the coalition Government got to in the 2010 to 2015 Parliament, in which we raised the state pension age to 66 in 2011 and brought forward the increase to 67 really quite considerably. That was based on the principle that we should get roughly a third of our adult life in retirement, and I think we should be very clear about sticking to that principle. However, it is right that, if life expectancy increases, that has to be paid for. If we are going to get longer in retirement, we have to find a way of paying for that. The inevitable impact is that we have to work a bit longer to pay for that. If there is a clear principle that we will spend about a third of our adult life in retirement, people can at least understand what the situation is and what may be coming down the line. I urge the Minister to not move away from that principle, to at least give people that understanding.

I fully support all the other pension reforms introduced by the coalition Government, including the successful roll-out of auto-enrolment and the introduction of the single-tier state pension, which was designed to say to people, “You will get a state pension and it will be above the poverty threshold, so there will not be any means test. If you save more and have your own private pension, you won’t be losing benefits.” It is therefore absolutely worth saving for that pension. The success of auto-enrolment ties directly into that. Everybody is clear that it is well worth their doing that.

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

May I take the hon. Gentleman back to a point that he made a moment ago about raising the pension age because of increasing life expectancy? That has always been the justification that has been given. However, at best, life expectancy is now stalling, and in Scotland it has been falling for the past two years. Does he agree that, in that context, it seems bizarre to use that information to raise the age further and faster?

[Nigel Mills]

I will come to that point in my argument. If we accept that we should stick to the principle that we get roughly a third of our adult life in retirement, the reason why we would increase the state pension age is that we have seen a three-year increase in life expectancy, and that should give us two more years on the state pension age. So for every 12 months life expectancy goes up, people should effectively get four months of that in retirement and expect to work for eight months of it. The hon. Lady is right: the data does not now show, sadly, life expectancy increasing, certainly not at the rate that was forecast by all the actuarial calculations at the time of previous reviews. The data for the 2018 to 2020 reference period showed that male life expectancy had fallen by seven weeks compared with the 2015 to 2017 reference period, and female life expectancy had gone up by half a week, or something really quite insignificant.

On that logic, we would be thinking, “Yes, we are due a periodic review and it would say that nothing has changed—in fact it has got a bit worse. There is nothing to see here, so let’s not make any more changes.” The Minister can intervene if she wants to say that that is what the review says, and we can all go home quite early, but I suspect that nothing is ever quite that simple.

I suppose what we are asking the Minister to confirm later in the debate is whether the Government will stick to the principle of people getting a roughly fixed proportion of their adult life in retirement, and whether they will therefore be guided by that 33% figure. The hon. Lady’s point would appear to suggest that the position is, if anything, worse than that at the time of the Cridland review six years ago and we should presumably come to the same conclusion as that. That is not what the media stories are suggesting. They seem to be saying that the increase to 68, scheduled for the mid-2040s, will come forward to perhaps as early as the mid-2030s—possibly around 10 years from now.

That leads me on to two keys asks of the Government, and I think they were principles that were previously set. First, increases in the state pension age should always come with 10 years’ notice, so we should never give people less than 10 years to have to change their retirement plans. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that there will be at least 10 years’ notice.

Furthermore, we should make one of these changes only every 10 years; we should not be making multiple changes. Had the Cridland review been handled differently, we could have had the increase to 66 from 2011, the increase to 67 in 2014, and then the move to 68 a few years after that. That would have been far too much change too quickly for people to handle.

Those key principles that we established were not that different from what the Labour Government did in previous pension Acts when they brought in pension age rises. It is overwhelmingly in the interests of a stable pension system that we keep those fundamental principles in place. We do not want to end up in another situation like we had with the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, where women—and I met many of them in my constituency—genuinely did not know that their state pension age was going up significantly until they tried to claim it or thought they were about to get it, only to in some cases find out that it was another five or six years away. That is why we need to ensure we have that certainty in place. I know that that was changed in the Pensions Act 1995, so everybody had at least 15 years’ notice for most of it, but people just were not told, or at least not in a way that they understood or noticed. We need a clear, stable pension architecture, as was established under the coalition Government, with a single-tier state pension above the poverty threshold, so that people could save for themselves and had predictability.

This is not random conspiracy theory nonsense. Articles are occasionally written by people who just do not believe that when they get to retirement age, their state pension will be there, or that they will ever get to it. In fact, there was an article in the Daily Mail raising exactly that point. Reading other stuff around, we see that there is a general pervasive fear that people will never get to state pension age—that it will always be pushed just out of reach and they will never actually get there. That is why we need to be absolutely clear that that is not what we are trying to do here. We have a predictable and reliable state pension system that people can factor into their retirement savings and then use to plan for the later years of their life. I am sure the Minister will be able to reaffirm that that is absolutely the Government’s position.

There is a question about whether the Government are minded to make a change. I think the Cridland review suggested that we could have brought the change forward to the late 2030s, at least, so it should not be a complete surprise if we think that 2044 is probably too late and would result in that figure of roughly 33% becoming a bit generous and people getting a bit longer than that. We need to set out the rationale for that pretty clearly and try to work through how we can help people who will be put in the most difficult position by that change. Intriguingly, the Cridland review said that if the Government are after Budget savings, increasing the state pension age is not a very clever way to do that. Instead, the review recommended abolishing the pension triple lock, which, I suspect, is not a view that has great support around Parliament. Hopefully this latest review does not re-recommend that, and the Government will not accept it if it does.

There were, though, some sensible analyses and recommendations as to what we can do to help people who are out of work in their mid-60s because they are either not really fit for work or not realistically going to get a job then. How do we give them financial support when we cannot give them their state pension? Do we subject them to full universal credit conditionality, or can we find a way of giving them a better experience? The review recommended potentially allowing people to access the state pension a year early, having a benefit equivalent to the state pension at least a year early or having a tapering-off approach to UC or UC conditionality, in case people fall out of work at just the wrong point.

I am not actually aware that the Government have ever really put in place any of those measures, so that would be another ask of the Minister. If the Government are thinking of making a change, while we do need the notice, can we also put in place a plan early for handling those who will be the worst affected by the change? I think we will need that for the rise to 67, anyway, which is coming up much sooner. It is just not realistic for people who fall out of work very late in their working life to get another job, and leaving them in financial trouble for those last few months before they get their pension seems to be a rather inefficient and cruel situation. Hopefully we will have made some progress on that before we get to the next pension age.

I would also like to say that I do not think handling this sort of issue as part of the Budget process is necessarily sensible. This change will not affect the public finances this year or next year, or, actually, the next Parliament; it may not be until the Parliament after that, or possibly even the Parliament after that, when this triggers any financial savings. There is not, as far as I can tell, any real Budget sensitivity to how the Government make this announcement, so I do not think we need to have a shroud of secrecy over what the Government are thinking of doing.

What the Government should do is publish the Neville-Rolfe review. It would be helpful if Baroness Neville-Rolfe could appear before the Work and Pensions Committee and explain the findings of her review. I think she has been brought back as a Minister in a different Department, so I am not entirely clear whether that would be permitted. Could we have a Minister from a different Department answering questions about a review they led before they were a Minister? I cannot think of any reason why not. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that the Government would be happy for her to come and explain the findings of her review. We could then have an open consultation about the content of that review and come up with a coherent policy, rather than it being dropped out by the Treasury and perhaps consulted on afterwards. The fear is always that once something has been announced, there is much less chance of it being changed.

I hope that the Government will get the feeling from this debate that people are concerned about there being further rises in the state pension age before we have had a chance to assess fully the impacts of the rise to 66—let alone the rise to 67 that is coming. I think we all recognise that it is a difficult situation and that it is worse for different parts of the country, worse for people in different occupations and possibly worse for women than for men. It would be useful to understand those implications and how we can mitigate them before we make any further decisions.

Fundamentally, if life expectancy data is not going as has been forecast, we should respond to the facts as they change and accept that our policy on expected changes to the state pension age can change as well, that we do not need the increases to come as fast and as often as we had thought, and that we should just leave things as they are. Let us hope that life expectancy starts to increase again. We can make these decisions then, rather than rushing into things that really hurt people, that bring uncertainty to the pension system—we do not need that—and that will probably not bring any financial savings for several Chancellors.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Let me restate my point: our pension architecture and the foundations on which we have been trying to build the system are all still there and are robust, and we can all rely on them.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I echo the appreciation of the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) for bringing the debate on the state pension age to the Floor of the House today. There is great concern that, according to reports, the UK Government plan to accelerate their current timeline for increasing the state pension age again, raising it to 68 by 2034. That means that those born in the 1970s or later could soon be told that a review of the increase in state pension age will further delay their retirement. If the Minister can tell us that that simply will not happen, we can all just go home and not worry about it, as the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) said. We would all be delighted.

It is bad enough that the state pension age is due to rise again from 66 to 67 by 2028. It is even worse that the women born in the 1950s had their state pension age increased with little or no notice, a move that has robbed them of tens of thousands of pounds of their hard-earned and expected state pension, throwing many of them into deep poverty and unnecessary hardship. That is all bad enough, but now we face the prospect of the Government planning to bring forward the increase in retirement age from 67 to 68 from 2046 to affect anyone now aged 54 or younger.

The Minister may say that no final decision has been taken, but how can anyone, having witnessed how women born in the 1950s have been treated, have any real faith that the Government understand how the increase in retirement age would have a disproportionate impact on those who have worked all their lives for poor pay? The UK already has one of the lowest pensions in Europe, and these plans will have an impact on millions of people, many of whom are already struggling financially. Age UK has said that

“any Government decision to accelerate the rise in Pension Age will condemn millions to a miserable and impoverished run up to retirement—and often beyond too”.

So many people are already in poor health by the time they reach their state pension and they are already suffering financial hardship.

As the hon. Member for North East Fife said, probably every one of us has spoken to women born in the 1950s, and when we do they tell us that the biggest UK Government swindle in recent memory was robbing their generation of their rightful state pensions at the age of 60. Many discovered, often by sheer accident, that their anticipated pension would not arrive until years later, as there was equalisation with men. The anger, sense of betrayal and disappointment was only inflamed when UK Government Ministers bizarrely and insensitively insisted that this provided an opportunity for the women affected to train for new careers. Some of them then formed the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, which continues to campaign for the injustice against them to be recognised and remedied. They must be given the compensation that is their right and I applaud the work they have done, because those women faced delays of up to six years to access their state pension, one in four of them now struggle to make payments on crucial bills and one third are in debt, with single women the worst affected. So that we can avoid this happening again, will the Minister tell us what impact assessment the UK Government have carried out, or will carry out, on any further proposals to accelerate the rise in the state pension age to 68 by 2034 or, indeed, to accelerate it at all?

It seems to the people outside this Chamber who are worried about this or who have experienced this, as the WASPI women have, that this Government have developed a taste for robbing people of their hard-earned state pension. The website Interactive Investor calculates that bringing forward to 2034 the increase in someone’s pension age to 68 could mean a lost year of full state pension of almost £17,000 for workers aged 46. Royal London insurance found that more than half of those aged 55 and over are likely to have the state pension as their main income, with 1.5 million of those in pre-state-pension years, and 31 % with no savings at all to fall back on. Many of them are also struggling with caring responsibilities as well as financial ones.

Pensioners relying on state pension as their main source of income are more likely to have already undergone a working life of low pay, and they are more likely to have health challenges in retirement and a shorter life expectancy. They are also the pensioners who simply cannot afford to retire early, even when health problems occur. Raising the retirement age even further will therefore have a disproportionate effect on poorer older people who will enjoy fewer retirement years.

A review of the state pension age in 2017 established that people should expect to spend one third of their adult life in retirement. As we know and as has been said, life expectancy in the UK is, at best, stagnating, which seriously undermines the case for raising the state pension age. I am afraid that those considerations will not have an impact on Government thinking and that the very logic they have used in the past for increasing state pension age—rising life expectancy—will not apply. If that is the case, I would remind the Minister that not only have life expectancy rates stalled across the UK, but they have actually fallen for the second year in a row in Scotland. Perhaps the Minister would like to factor that in when determining the state pension age. According to the UK Government’s own argument and the logic they have used so far, the state pension age should perhaps even be falling.

The UK Government must abandon any further acceleration of the state pension age across the UK. I hope that all parties will oppose that and commit to continuing that opposition beyond the next election. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, if you keep tinkering with, accelerating and rising the state pension age, you create uncertainty and undermine the whole concept of a state pension, perhaps fatally undermining it for future generations.

Even talk of accelerating the state pension age feels like a grubby smash and grab of people’s hard-earned pensions to try to fill the black hole in the UK’s finances, which is a consequence of 13 years of austerity. That austerity started under Labour’s Gordon Brown and has continued ever since, compounded by the damage of Brexit to which Labour is fully signed up, cynically and disingenuously pretending that there is such a thing as a good Brexit after all. Labour knows that, but it is so desperate to win seats in England, it will say anything. But the public are watching.

To raise the state pension age further is bad enough. To raise it even faster than originally planned as a cost-cutting measure is unforgivable. People in Scotland were told in 2014 that the only way to protect the state pension was to vote no to independence. Here we are nine years later, and the state pension does not support the minimum standard of living. Pensioners have already been short-changed by £6,500 on average, due to the state pension underpayments to around 237,000 older people, and a further 100,000 potential underpayments that have been identified, which will take a year to correct. Let us not forget how easily the Government discarded their manifesto commitment to retain the triple lock, the abandonment of which means that current state pension payments are £520 less than they otherwise would have been.

We must all learn from the huge injustice perpetrated on WASPI women—I applaud their campaign for justice—but we cannot permit even more people to be robbed of tens of thousands of pounds of their rightful state pension as life expectancy stalls or even falls in Scotland. Meanwhile, our Government desperately seek to fill their financial black hole because of their own incompetence, and therefore have decided to pick a fight over pensions. That is an outrage. In the dying days of this Government, as they thrash around seeking to pick the pockets of others to pay for their own economic mismanagement, we must say that enough is enough.

In-work Poverty

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

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

The cost of living crisis is biting deep into the lives of my constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran. In-work poverty ought to be a contradiction in terms, but it is at an all-time high. Two thirds of working-age adults in poverty live in households where an adult is working, and 75% of children in poverty live in a home where at least one person is working, which shows that work offers no guaranteed route out of poverty. In-work benefits, such as universal credit, are simply not enough to lift people out of poverty, and cutting the universal credit uplift and the working tax credit of £20 a week was not just folly on the part of the Government; it was also cruel in the extreme, because it was done in the full knowledge of the hardship it would cause.

Despite the doubling of the Scottish child payment, the universal credit uplift cut has caused untold hardship in our communities. What can the Government do? They need to raise the statutory minimum wage in line with the real living wage, and they need to remove the age discrimination that it inherently contains. They need to understand that increasing the national minimum wage to £9.50 per hour next month is simply not enough to compensate the people who are suffering because of soaring costs in every direction, and it does not compensate them for the £20 cut in universal credit that they have already suffered.

The Government could ditch the national insurance tax rise, which is set to kick in next month and will disproportionately hit those in the lowest-paid jobs. They could increase statutory sick pay—we have one of the lowest sick pay rates in the OECD. Even so, one in five workers are simply not eligible for it, which, again, disproportionately impacts on women. They could support my Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill, because we know that beyond the emotional impact of bereavement, there are significant financial costs as well, without the bereaved having to worry about lost earnings. They could reverse the £20 per week universal credit cut immediately and abolish the electricity standing charge, which amounts to about a quarter of consumer energy bills for the less well off.

We all understand that global fuel prices are increasing, but motorists pay 58p per litre on fuel duty and then additionally pay 12p in VAT on that charge, so around 70p per litre of petrol goes straight to the Treasury in tax. As fuel hits £1.80 per litre, the UK Government must cut the tax take on fuel, as it does not just hit motorists who rely on their cars to get to work, but adds to business costs and impacts the whole economy, and increases the costs of goods and services. Cutting the tax on fuel could help prevent inflation reaching double figures. It makes complete sense to do that at this time.

The scandal of in-work poverty cannot be simply tolerated. The current cost of living crisis demands direct and urgent Government intervention right now, to support those in work who are no longer even just about managing—the group that the Government say they care about. The Government must respond to the needs and demands of those they purport to serve. I hope the Minister will not simply regurgitate what has already been done, because what has already been done is simply not enough in the face of a cost of living crisis that grows by the day. I hope he will be able to give us some hope that in the spring statement there will be a prospect of some respite for people across the UK, and for my constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I understand the hon. Member’s point, and that is why we have taken steps in that direction. I was going to come on to that in my speech, but I will come to it now. The national living wage, which we have already talked about, is projected to increase to £10, and other steps are being taken. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Easington would have the courtesy to let me respond. He raised that question earlier in the debate. Another important point is that policies, such as the increase in work allowances and the reduction in the taper rate for people on universal credit, are helping people in work to progress, do better and flourish.

We have already seen the creation of exiting job opportunities in the north-east, including through the industrial zone at the UK’s largest freeport, Teesworks, which is expected to create 20,000 jobs. Many of them are in green energy, establishing literally a green industry revolution in a region that many hon. Members participating in the debate represent. We should not forget that 6,000 jobs will be created as a result of Nissan’s plans for the UK’s first large-scale battery factory, as part of a £1 billion electric vehicle hub in Sunderland. That is alongside Stockton being on the frontline in the battle against covid, with the Novavax vaccine being made in Billingham later this year.

Opportunities abound in the north-east. Of course, we need to go further. I am disappointed that we are not hearing about these opportunities. So often we recognise that there are challenges, but there are also opportunities, and this Government are working hard to create them.

[Patricia Gibson]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Rutley]

I would not dream of not giving way to the hon. Member, because she is always so polite with her questions.

[Patricia Gibson]

I want to press the Minister on something that has been in my inbox—in all of our inboxes, I am sure—in the last few weeks. One of the big outlays for people who are in work and suffering is the cost of petrol or diesel to get to work. We pay 58p per litre in fuel duty and 20% VAT on that—it is a tax on a tax. The Minister will know that the cost of petrol drives up the cost of goods and services across the whole economy, and that drives up and feeds inflation. Does he agree that if we cut the tax on petrol, we can stop inflation driving up into double digits?

[David Rutley]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes; she makes it well and she makes it long. Perhaps we could do an Adjournment debate on the subject later. I recognise her point—I was trying to bring in a bit of humour there. With the fuel duty freeze that has been put in place we have been able to keep that cap over time. I recognise that we are in challenging circumstances; that is why the Chancellor has put in place a three-point plan. We have £20 billion set out in this financial year that is designed to help vulnerable people facing challenges and to deal with rising energy costs, £9 billion of which goes to the Chancellor’s three-point plan. We are doing substantial work to try and address those challenges, and we will continue to review the situation. As hon. Members will appreciate, throughout the pandemic we looked at what the challenges were and we responded. We responded well in the Department I work in—universal credit was particularly resilient.

I want to address the questions raised during the debate. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens)—a good man who understands a lot of those matters—asked about jobs being advertised on the DWP website. They go through a process and are checked to make sure that they are at the minimum wage or above—there are obviously some exceptions. If he has further information on that, I will gladly follow up because I know he takes the issue very seriously.