Oral Answers to Questions

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I know that my hon. Friend has a family in his constituency who have been through the ordeal he mentions. We are absolutely committed to helping families of missing people to deal with the administrative problems they face over and above the heartache that is involved. We are working on creating the new legal status of guardian of the property and affairs of a missing person, and we will introduce measures to the House as soon as parliamentary time permits.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

T6. On International Women’s Day, it is truly shocking that one in four women will experience gender-based violence. On 4 February, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), stated that primary legislation was required to ratify the Istanbul convention to try to tackle that disgrace. When will that legislation be brought forward?

[Mr Raab]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The last Government signed the convention in 2012. We have already implemented almost all its provisions, so the purpose would be to promote it abroad. There is a specific issue, as she may know, about extraterritorial jurisdiction under article 44. We are looking carefully at how that might be addressed.

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I would like to challenge the figure that was quoted by a Member on the Government Benches. The Opposition spokesman might have the correct figure, but the figure reported from the Department for Work and Pensions investigation in 2004 was just above 40%, not 75%. Surely, given such a cataclysmic change, every single one of these women should have had a simple letter on the doormat in 1995.

[Owen Smith]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. Even if 40% of women were unaware, that is 40% too many. As I said, five or six other surveys were done by academics and those in other institutions that suggested that 80% of women were unaware that they were going to be affected, so the reality is that the number was far greater.

The scale of this problem only truly started to dawn on people when the Government decided to double down on their calamity with the Pensions Act 2011.

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will come to that point later.

As I said, the problem was recognised by many people at the time of the 2011 Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), who has a great deal of expertise in this area, moved amendments that would have protected women born between October 1953 and April 1955 from waiting more than an extra year for their state pension.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Is it not also the case, as several of my constituents have said, that these changes compounded measures in the 1995 Act of which women were not informed? One lady said that until she got a letter saying, “You are no longer retiring at 64, but at 66,” she knew nothing about the fact that there had been a change, so for her the difference is six years.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Again, I will come on to that point a bit later.

Part of the problem in 2011 was that the Government did not seem to understand the implications of their own Bill. When the former Pensions Minister gave an interview to the Institute for Government after the 2015 election, he said, somewhat ungrammatically, I think, but fairly clearly:

“We made a choice, and the implications of what we were doing suddenly, about two or three months later, it became clear that they were very different from what we thought.”

I have known a few Ministers in my time who did not seem to understand the implications of their own Bills, but this was a former Pensions Minister—an acknowledged expert on social security—who did not understand what was going to happen. If he did not understand the position, how on earth could he expect the many thousands of affected women to understand it?

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[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we can be sure that not everybody knew and that not all of those who were told took the information to heart. We can be sure that some people were not told—there is no doubt about that. The pensions correspondent at the Financial Times told me:

“I dispute the evidence given to the Committee… by Lin Phillips, that ‘There was not much in the newspapers, only maybe a little bit in the business pages.’”

The correspondent has done a detailed study that will be presented as written evidence to the Select Committee, and she went on to say that she has looked at coverage from 1993, when the changes to equalise the state pension age for men and women was first mooted by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). She says that, from 1994 to 2006, there were hundreds of mentions of the state pension age in the news sections and the personal finance pages, as well as in the business pages.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, for such a drastic change as a change in the age of retirement, women had a right to expect to receive a direct letter, in the same way as they are given a pension statement on an almost annual basis?

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is right. There are huge lessons to be learned, and I will come on to them because both parties that were in government between 1995 and 2010—predominantly the party that is now the main Opposition party—have to be able to explain, to look at themselves and say, “Could we have done more? Could we have communicated better?” The answer has to be yes, although there is a philosophical question that remains valid today. It is for Members, and indeed for the WASPI campaign, which has offered some thoughts, to come up with ideas about how that philosophical question can be addressed, because surely there is a balance of responsibility between what the Government must do to spell out change, what the wider world, including the media, must do to communicate that change—in today’s world that includes social media—and what the individual must do to take responsibility for finding out about major things that will affect their life.

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[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Hanson. I thought I had withdrawn my name. I would like to make a few points that have particular relevance to Northern Ireland and my constituency.

We debated this issue in the Chamber some weeks ago. I hope that the Minister has reflected on our debate and has some answers about how to give transitional protection to the women sitting behind us and those in the devolved regions and England who are affected by the changes. They deserve it, and the Government must see that it happens.

There are particular issues in Northern Ireland affecting women who left school between 1947 and 1957. The school-leaving age in Northern Ireland was different from that in other parts of the UK. About 500 of those women have lost about two years’ contributions and are not getting their correct pension. Many of them are now in their 70s—it is a different group to those in their mid to late-50s. I ask the Government, in the interests of social justice, fairness and equality, to give those women protection.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Everybody understands that the changes were made to ensure equality, but women’s pensions are riddled with inequality. When I started at the NHS in 1982, I could not accrue death in service benefits to leave to a husband and children, if I had any. When that was finally remedied, it was backdated only to 1988. It is exactly the same for women who worked as cleaners and auxiliaries in the NHS and never had protection for their families.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Lady for that very compelling intervention. That is absolutely right. Women in the lower age brackets will be deeply affected, because they will have to wait longer for their pensions. Many of them are in caring roles, perhaps because their partners are not in good health, so their family income levels are desperately below the level needed to live on.

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[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee and all those who signed the petition for bringing about the debate. I know that my constituents would want me to pass on their thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her excellent opening speech and ensuring that we have the debate.

I want briefly to tell the story of one of my constituents who, despite the protestations from the Government Members, tells me she was never informed in 1995 that her state pension age was changing from 60 to 65. From her own reading and information picked up from various sources—I do not know whether that includes the Financial Times—she was led to believe that she would receive her state pension at 62. She told me that although she was unhappy with a two-year deferment of her state pension, she was fit and healthy at the time and did not understand the magnitude of the changes. Her view is that we lived in a different world at that time, and she said:

“The welfare state had not been mauled…There were safety nets to assist the poor and the sick that have now been removed.”

Like a lot of working-class, low-waged people at that time, she was depending on her state pension as her main source of income at retirement, although she hoped to be able to save a little bit of money to supplement that. As time progressed, she unfortunately began to suffer with serious health issues and was forced to give up work. She was born in 1957 and is doubly unhappy that she now has to wait until she is 66 to receive her state pension. She has little in the way of private pension provision and is forced to live on minimal income, while suffering from ill health, with the prospect of having to wait until 2023—seven more years—before she qualifies for her state pension.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Given increasing multi-morbid health conditions, there will be women in the 60 to 66 age group with ill health who are suffering due to the cut in support and are then put in the employment and support allowance work-related activity group with absolutely no chance of getting a job or decent support.

[Liz McInnes]

The hon. Lady is, of course, absolutely right. Several Members have mentioned the lack of support that is available to women born in the ’50s who find themselves in that situation.

Many women have visited my surgeries, such as Barbara, who was born in 1955. She said to me:

“Women born in the 1950s were more likely to give up work when bringing up their children because there was no provision for maternity leave. They are unlikely to have had the option to develop their own personal occupational pension to the same level, even if they have one. It also remains to be seen whether the majority of women affected will be able to remain in paid employment into their mid to late 60s to lessen these effects.”

I also met Lorraine, who worked in education but, because she worked part time, was not even allowed to join the occupational pension scheme. She is now 59 and has had to give up work completely to care for five elderly relatives. She also does respite fostering. This woman does so much for society and ultimately saves the Government money by caring for all these people, yet her reward is to wait until she is 66 before she qualifies for her state pension.

Jackie introduced herself to me as “June ’54 and furious!”—she allowed me to quote her on that. She pointed out that raising the state pension also denies entitlement to concessionary travel and heating allowances. She started work in 1971, when the pension age was 60, but had to take early retirement from the police service to look after an elderly relative. She will not get her state pension until she is 66. She tells me—I believe her—that she did not receive any letters informing her of that.

The Government try to justify the increase in pension age by stating that life expectancy is increasing, yet there is a real north-south divide regarding life expectancy, as several hon. Members have said. Women born in the 1950s deserve to be treated fairly. Many of them worked part time and brought up families. Many were denied access to private and workplace pensions, so the state pension was key to their financial plans for retirement. I call on the Government to reconsider the unequal treatment of women born in the’50s, to consider the inadequate notice that those women were given of the increase in the state pension age and to revisit the transitional arrangements made for them.

State Pension Age (Women)

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. Let me repeat what a constituent has more recently told me. She came to my surgery and explained that it had come as a shock to her that she would have to wait until she was 66 before she could retire, she was not informed, and found out only when she requested a pension statement. That goes to the heart of this matter of being informed and of having time to plan.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I would like some clarification from the hon. Lady. Freedom of information requests suggest that details were not sent out until the late 2000s. Is she implying that all these women who say that they were not contacted were contacted after 1995, but just ignored the notification? I find it hard to believe that that is what she is saying.

[Chloe Smith]

No, the hon. Lady is mishearing me. I am citing directly from constituents. I will ensure that the Official Report reflects my citations. Let me be absolutely clear. I do not know whether the woman in question received the letter; how could I possibly know that? I know what my constituents tell me. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of what has happened historically. I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) who opened the debate that the past is the past and that there is only a certain amount that we can do if we are looking back at a problem that has its roots in 1995.

Let me now explain what I am looking for as we move forward. I have already listed a set of principles that we could apply. The first is that we should protect those who can no longer work. Secondly, we should provide the right support for those who can work. Thirdly, we should maintain sound public finances, as to fail to do so hurts every single person in the economy. Fourthly, we should of course promote better communications to enable people to plan. That is my main message to Ministers today.

Let me dwell on the point of equalisation. Earlier in the debate, there was a hubbub of people saying, “Yes, we all agree on equalisation.” Let me provide a few figures on why we need to do that. When the state pension age was first set at 65 in 1926, male life expectancy at birth was 64 compared with 89 today. Indeed, if the state pension age had risen in line with the average life expectancy at 65 since 1926, it would now be at least 75. We have a significant gap that we need to make up. Indeed, if we looked even further back in the history books, we would see that when the state pension was set in 1908, the average life expectancy was 41. Members can see very clearly the difference with which we have to deal. Lord Turner’s report on pensions, commissioned by the previous Government, acknowledged that a more generous state pension had to be funded by an increase in the pension age.

Let us also make sure that we are aware of the costs. I understand that there would be costs to the tune of £30 billion to return to the 1995 timetable. Let us compare that with a few other things, simply so that we have a well informed debate. The 2015-16 spending figures, as shown in the July Budget, include expenditure of £28 billion on housing and the environment and £34 billion on public order or safety. All that we spend on housing or on public order and safety is broadly equivalent to the sum we are talking about today.

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[Huw Merriman]

I absolutely take that point, but it would be naive not to recognise that as we live and expect to live healthier lives, we not only can but want to work for longer.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Huw Merriman]

No. I will make some progress, if I may.

The question remains: what, if anything, can be done to lessen the impact on those who will now have to work for longer before qualifying for their state pension, particularly those who it can be demonstrated were not notified over time, as they should have been?

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[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

A lot of the issues have already been covered. The issue of equalisation is totally accepted, but in response to a Government Member who is no longer in his place I should say that we did point out that the life expectancy increase is not equal. In parts of Scotland we have huge differences in life expectancy, which relates to wealth, in particular. Women who are lower paid, who are unlikely to have a decent pension, who have no chance of having any other kind of pension are exactly the ones who do not get this extended life expectancy.

We also heard from a Government Member that women were definitely written to and that maybe they chose to ignore it. However, we know from FOI 3231 that the information campaign was from 2009 to 2013; in other words, 14 years later. I am sad to challenge Labour Members, but the DWP in 2004, under a Labour Government, recognised from its survey that only 46% of women knew what was coming. For most of these women it is not an extension of a year or 18 months; it is literally a change from 60 to 66.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

One of my constituents from Strathaven contacted me this week to say that she had only heard about the changes through word of mouth and a web search. At 59, the Government website suggested she could retire at 62. That was then changed and put up to 64-and-a-half. The changes are unfair because they penalise people at the later stages, when they cannot make alternative arrangements.

[Dr Whitford]

We have heard from right across the Chamber about the lack of communication and the acceleration of the age extension, and the fact that women could do nothing about it. This is built on a generation of women who had a lifetime of poor pay. We need to think about that going forward.

Auto-enrolment does not cover the modern worker who has multiple mini-jobs, as they are called. Their combined earnings are not considered. We will therefore have another pension debate in another 30 years about the people who have been left with no pension because of current approaches to work. We know that the derived pension benefit from their husbands is not counted. We know that only 22% of women who retire this year will qualify for the full flat-rate pension. This is just unacceptable. We are talking about women who are often unemployed at 60. They are facing jobseeker’s allowance and multiple job applications. They do not qualify for free transport here in England, free prescriptions or any other benefits, such as cold weather fuel payments. For these women, this is a multiple and accelerating problem.

We have been asked by those on the Government Benches—they are now horrifically empty for such an important debate—to come up with a solution. I understand that HMRC is looking at the higher rate of pension relief, which may claw back £45 billion. That more than covers the £30 billion, which we are told would cover full transitional arrangements. High level tax relief is for the wealthiest people, those who this week, the first proper working week of the year, have already earned more than the average wage. Three-quarters of them are men. The route we should be following is to take away money that goes to people who probably, despite their long life expectancy, will not live long enough to spend it, and share it more equally with women who have been very badly treated. This is an issue of fairness and the Government have a responsibility to deal with it.

State Pension Age Equalisation

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed, and as I was just saying, the Chancellor made the comment:

“You’re just increasing the age at which that retirement entitlement kicks in”.

He went on to say:

“It was actually one of the less controversial things we have done”—

amazingly—

“and yet it has probably saved more money than anything else we have done.”

That relates to the point that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath made about “choice”.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

In view of the fact that in the autumn statement we heard the Chancellor crowing about all the money he had found down the back of the sofa, should we not just learn lessons for the future but demand that something is done for these women, particularly those who have been hit multiple times and who have had their retirement extended by six years?

[Barbara Keeley]

I agree with the hon. Lady.

As with the tax credit cuts that the Chancellor has just been forced to abandon, it is clear from a comment such as the one I have just quoted that he does not understand the impact of his policies on those affected by them. He does not understand what it really means to

“just increase the age at which that retirement entitlement kicks in”.

I have a constituent who is now forced to live off her savings after working and paying national insurance for 44 years, and another who is unemployed at the age of 61 and trying to live on £75 a week. Another constituent aged 61 has paid into national insurance for 44 years. She has been on sick leave, and when she moved on to half pay she was told that she had to start going to the jobcentre, where the staff treated her without dignity or respect. After 44 years, she still has to pay national insurance even though she is only on half pay. I have spoken to women who in their early 60s have been forced on to the Work programme. They find that demeaning after putting in a lifetime of work and contributions.

Other women have raised other important issues. Moving the pension age means missing out on pensioner benefits—even such things as a bus pass. That is difficult when an older partner has a bus pass and the 1950s-born woman does not and has to wait six years to get one. There is also no uniformity about concessionary bus travel, which is available at 60 in London, but not in other areas. The woman who told me that has to pay £7.50 to travel by bus to hospital. The women forced to wait until 65 or 66 for their state pension do not get free prescriptions either, and I have talked about the many health conditions which make that a key issue. Waiting up to six years for a state pension and other pensioner benefits will also hit carers who give up work to care. Carers UK tells me that women approaching pension age are much more likely to have caring responsibilities than men. One in four women aged 50 to 64 has caring responsibilities, compared with one in six men. A significant number of women with caring responsibilities decide or feel forced to retire early.

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[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Davies. I was not expecting to be called quite so early. It is a pleasure to join this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing it. The key issue today is communication. I do not think anyone is arguing about the general move towards the equalisation of pension ages. Indeed, most of the decisions were made in 1995, as the hon. Lady pointed out. The issue is about how the women affected were communicated to and when.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

I take issue with the idea that the problem is just communication. While a big part of it was that women were not given notice, in actual fact, the goalposts have moved on more than one occasion for certain women. That is a big issue, too.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady is right to say that women born after April 1953 had their state pension age increase accelerated under the previous Government. Paul Lewis referred to the three waves of women affected by the changes. Nothing changed for the first wave—the 1950 to 1953 group—but things changed for women born after April 1953. It is correct to say that the state pension age was accelerated for them.

Coming back to the point on communication, it is interesting that in recent evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, the previous Pensions Minister said that it was unclear to him at exactly what stage people affected by the 1995 Act were written to. The Minister here today referred at DWP questions to a letter writing campaign from 2009 to 2010. Can he say more about that? For example, does his Department believe that that was the first stage at which women affected were written to, or was there an earlier campaign before 2009? That would be interesting to know. To some extent, the decision in December 2013 to give people affected by future pension changes,

“at least 10 years’ notice”,

shows that the DWP has taken on board the point the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South made on lessons learned.

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[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Indeed, it is a pleasure to follow the excellent contribution of the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), in which she cited examples of her own constituents who are affected.

I am grateful for being able to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), whose contribution touched on much of what she rightly said in a previous Westminster Hall debate on women and low pay, in which I had the privilege of summing up for the Scottish National party. She also touched on some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) in a debate on guaranteed income for retirees led by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). She made a great speech and set out the issues well. My right hon. and hon. Friends in the SNP agree with equalisation, but we do not support the unfair manner in which the changes have been made, and we want to see action on that. A transitional period is required to protect retirement plans for women. I thank the WASPI campaign and constituents in Airdrie and Shotts who have contacted me about this issue by email and on social media.

There are now three categories of people who are affected by the two legislative changes: women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1953 will, under the 1995 Act, have a pension age of between 60 and 63 by March next year; women born between 6 April 1953 and 5 December 1953 will, under the 2011 Act, have a pension age of between 63 and 65 by November 2018; and men and women born between 6 December 1953 and 5 April 1960 will have a pension age set by the 2011 Act of between 65 and 66 by October 2020. What a guddle.

The 2011 Act has affected around 5 million people in total—approximately 2.6 million women and 2.3 million men, who now have to wait longer to reach pension age. It is clear that women did not get a fair notice period and were not allowed enough time to prepare. Most of those affected by the 2011 Act have had only about five years to prepare. Pension planning should be lifelong and should not be made on the hoof as people approach retirement.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Neil Gray]

I am afraid I do not have time.

The lack of time to prepare is simply unfair. Age UK has said that the revised timetable for retirement allows

“insufficient time to prepare for retirement”,

as my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) also said during the passage of the 2011 Act. With all due respect, it is for that reason that I have to disagree with the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). These women are being financially penalised and let down on what they were promised for retirement.

Another issue is that women will be worse off than men, yet again. According to the Pensions Policy Institute, only 65% of women in the 55 to 59-year-old range and only 34% of women in the 60 to 64-year-old range are currently economically active. That means that women are in a poorer position to compensate for the changes through work, and it will be more difficult for them to save and plan for their retirement. More women are excluded from the scope of auto-enrolment, as well, so women will lose out further. Based on Department for Work and Pensions analysis published in 2013 and 2014, we can estimate that setting the threshold at £10,000, rather than the 2014-15 earnings limit of £5,772, excludes about 1.6 million people from the scope of auto-enrolment.

I sincerely hope that the Government will revisit the inequalities currently experienced by women born in the 1950s. The Minister can take steps today by agreeing to the terms of the WASPI petition and bringing forward the review from 2017 as a matter of urgency.

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[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing this debate. She spoke with passion and demonstrated the human and social impact of the changes that will affect women in her constituency and throughout the United Kingdom. I thank all the speakers who have contributed to this debate. There has been a lot of passion and appreciation of the challenges that women face as a consequence of these changes.

I say respectfully to my colleague on the all-party group on pensions, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is passionate about pensions and knows a lot about them, that we accept that there are issues of communication here, but this is about not communication, but fairness. The Government must recognise that the transitional arrangements are not right, and, on the back of this debate, they must reflect on that and make changes.

Members on both sides of the House agree that it is important that we deliver fairness in pension provision. To that end, there is no doubt that the significant historical gender issues with pension provision need to be tackled. Although we have made progress, there are still substantial shortfalls in pension provision for women, and the challenge of securing dignity in retirement is affected by women’s longer life expectancy.

[Dr Whitford]

We have talked about communication and the women who have had multiple hits, but this issue is also about the fact that, during their working lives, those women had such difficulty in accruing a strong pension pot in the first place. Women who worked part time, as my mother did—my father died when I was quite young—were not able to contribute to a significant pension at all. My mother worked for the civil service in Belfast and was made to stop when she got married and had children. Women who got divorced, as she eventually did from my stepfather, got no decent share of a pension pot at all. Those women have faced prejudice through their whole lives, and now we want to solve the problem of equalisation on one tiny cohort of women. That is an unfair burden.

[Ian Blackford]

I absolutely agree. We are talking about the state pension, but my hon. Friend is right. That is why I referred to the gender issues in pensions. We must address not just this issue, but some of the other challenges that we face, such as the fact that women who work part time do not participate in auto-enrolment. There are many things we have to look at to ensure that women have dignity in retirement. Much has to be done.

The SNP warned about state pension age equalisation in the last Parliament, and it is disappointing that our concerns were not taken on board. I should state that we agree with equalisation, but we do not support the unfair manner in which the changes were made. A longer transitional period is required to protect women. My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford)stated in this chamber in May 2011:

“The issue is not only the pace of change. It is the context of a lifetime of low pay and inequality faced by many women, and the old-age problems that are a cumulative effect of that. The Government had an opportunity here to tackle women’s inequality in old age, but so far they have, instead, arbitrarily targeted women born in 1954.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 436WH.]

What created this injustice that many woman born in the 1950s are facing? Let us go over the facts. The Pensions Act 1995 provided for the state pension age for women to increase from 60 to 65 over the period April 2010 to 2020. The coalition Government legislated in the Pensions Act 2011 to accelerate the latter part of this timetable, so that women’s state pension age will now reach 65 in November 2018. The reason cited was the increase in life expectancy since the timetable was last revised. As mentioned by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, some people in the north of England, and indeed in Scotland, have a much lower life expectancy and will not receive the full benefits that the legislation mentions. It had initially been intended that the equalised state pension age would then rise to 66 by April 2020. However, due to concerns expressed about the impact on women born in March 1954, who would see their state pension age increase by as much as two years, it was decided that that should happen over a longer period, with the state pension age reaching 66 in October 2020. We must go further.

A shifting of the entitlement by six months was wholly inadequate. Indeed, I would say it was a mean-spirited move by a Government who have failed the test of fairness in treating the women caught up in the changes. With this Government, it is not about doing the right thing but about doing what they can get away with. No doubt the Minister will trot out the line that the money could not be found to create a longer transitional period, but it is all about priorities. When they can find £167 billion to spend on nuclear weapons, they can find the money to do the right thing and look after their pensioners. On this and so many other issues, the Government have a faulty moral compass.

Women affected by the 1995 and 2011 Acts fall into the following groups. Women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1953 have a state pension age under the 1995 Act of between 60 and 63 and reach state pension age by March 2016. Women born between 6 April 1953 and 5 December 1953 have a state pension age under the 2011 Act of between 63 and 65 and reach state pension age by November 2018. Men and women born between 6 December 1953 and 5 April 1960 have a state pension age set by the 2011 Act of between 65 and 66 and reach state pension age by October 2020. The 2011 Act affects around 5 million people—2.6 million women and 2.3 million men—who will now have to wait longer to reach state pension age.

Women did not get a fair notice period. The periodic state pension age reviews established by the Pensions Act 2014 seek to give 10 years’ notice. In 2005, the Pensions Commission suggested that

“a policy of significant notice of any increase (e.g. at least 15 years) should be possible”.

Why was that not delivered? The 1995 Act gave 15 years’ notice, did not take effect until 2010 and did not affect anyone aged 44 or over at the time of the announcement. However, some of those whose state pension age was increased by the 2011 Act received only around five years’ notice. That is simply not good enough. Those with the largest increases—18 months—got less than eight years’ notice. Age UK argued that the revised timetable could leave many with

“insufficient time to prepare for retirement.”

The previous Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, said that he accepted that the period of notice being given to some women was “the key issue”. He also said in a debate in October 2013 that he recognised that not everyone affected by the 1995 Act had been aware of it:

“I accept that some women did not know about it, and not everybody heard about it at the time.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 54WH.]

Is it not an obligation of Government to ensure that people are aware and can take action? Will the Government accept responsibility for that?

In a submission to the Work and Pensions Committee on the impact of the Government’s pensions reforms on men, the Pensions Policy Institute said:

“The previous changes legislated in the Pensions Act 2007 gave men an effective 17 years notice from the year in which the changes were legislated to the year in which the SPA increase started (2024). The current proposals are giving men just over 7 years of notice (2018).”

What a muddle. What a way to treat people who need to plan ahead for their old age. Within five years of the current state pension age of 65, only 54% of the male workforce is still economically active. It would be desirable to give 10 years’ notice because around 76% of men are still economically active within 10 years of the current state pension age of 65 and could therefore respond to the policy change by delaying their retirement if they need to.

The Pensions Act 1995 gave women an effective 15 years’ notice of the year in which the state pension age increase started, but the current proposals have limited that to five. Only 65% of women aged 55 to 59 are economically active, compared with around 76% of men, and only 34% of women aged 60 to 64 are currently economically active, compared with 54% of men. Quite frankly, those women do not have the time to put in adequate provision to compensate for the changes. The evidence suggests that policy makers should ideally give women more than 10 years’ notice of any future state pension age changes to allow them sufficient time to adjust their retirement plans or to save more while still working. The National Centre for Social Research stated in 2011:

“In 2008, fewer than half (43%) of the women who, at that point, would not be eligible for their state pension until they were 65 were aware of the planned change.”

Women cannot simply have their retirement age increased by four or six years without even knowing about it. Ultimately, it will lead to hardship, shattering retirement plans with devastating consequences, including poverty and ill health.

The change throws up the question of the position of women with multiple low-paid jobs in relation to automatic enrolment. Women will disproportionally suffer further under new changes to the state pension under the single tier when they have multiple jobs. More women are excluded from the scope of auto-enrolment and will lose out further. Employers are required to auto-enrol workers who are not already in a workplace pension scheme, are aged between 22 and state pension age and earn more than a minimum threshold. The earnings trigger for auto-enrolment was initially set at £5,035, with contributions paid from the same level. However, it has since increased on a number of occasions and is now £10,000, with contributions paid from a lower level—the national insurance lower earnings limit, which was £5,824 in 2015-16. Based on Department for Work and Pensions analysis, we can estimate that the threshold of £10,000, rather than the 2014-15 lower earnings limit of £5,772, excludes some 1.67 million people from auto-enrolment, 77% of whom are women. The Government must revisit the inequalities felt by women born in the 1950s and they must do so immediately.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that specialist courts can lead to a reduction in reoffending. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor recently visited the United States, where there is evidence that reoffending does diminish with specialist courts. We will be taking on board whatever we can learn to put into practice in the UK.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

T5. In the new ministerial code, published on 15 October, Ministers are obliged to comply with “the law”, but the phrase “including international law and treaty obligations and to uphold the administration of justice”has been removed. The former Attorney General did not like that phrase very much, so does the Minister feel this changes the obligation to comply with international law?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. There has been no change in obligations on Ministers. The code reflects the duty to obey the law. We have long had a dualist approach to international law, and it is also important that that is upheld.

Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I accept what the hon. and learned Gentleman says, but one of the things I find particularly repulsive is that our young people see these head shops in front of them on the high street, and then think that the shops are legal and safe because if they were not, the police would have come along and nabbed them. I will answer him later because we do need to think about what happens with an underground market.

This Bill sends out a message to young people who are unaware that these substances are dangerous. Many of those that are sold in the shops are illegal now, let alone before we ban the lot of them. As I support the aims and general approach of the Bill, I want to ensure that it is drafted and implemented as effectively as possible, so I will press the Government on several issues and worries. I hope that the Minister will take my recommendations and concerns in the constructive manner in which they will be intended.

My first point is about education. The Bill is an appropriate way to try to tackle the supply of dangerous psychoactive substances, but we need to reduce demand. Unfortunately, there is a load of misinformation about psychoactive substances. Research by the Royal Society for Public Health found that a quarter of young people aged between 16 and 24 believed that so-called legal highs were safer than illegal drugs. This is a dangerous misunderstanding, because some of the new psychoactive substances have gone on to be controlled and designated as class A, indicating that they were some of the most harmful drugs around before they were controlled. Passing this legislation has the potential to put to bed the dangerous myth that psychoactive substances are safe, but the measure will do so only if it is supported by a concerted communication and education strategy.

The Labour Administration in Wales have shown us how that can be done by putting education at the forefront of their drug prevention strategy. There is now a core substance misuse education programme in 97% of Welsh primary and secondary schools to ensure that almost all Welsh schoolchildren receive accurate, consistent and credible information about the potential harms of drugs, rather than having to rely on myths and guesswork. Labour Members have consistently emphasised the role of PSHE—personal, social, health and economic education—in reducing drug use. I have voted to make PSHE compulsory in schools, and that needs to be considered again.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

This aspect did not go to the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs and has therefore been put together without its advice. The use of illegal drugs has been going down not because of locking people up and criminalisation, but because of education. We all want these chemicals not to be used, but we must not overreact and not use education enough, because it is a key tool.

[Lyn Brown]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; I completely and utterly agree. Education is the key to this. We need to reduce the demand for the supply.

Thus far, a mere £180,556 has been spent on education programmes on new psychoactive substances, as the Minister told the House in a written answer on 2 June. Sadly, the Government rejected Labour’s amendment to the Bill in the Lords which would have placed a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to increase public awareness and help schools to educate children about the dangers of these drugs. Let me say gently that that is a wholly inadequate response given that the Government themselves recognise that these drugs are a serious problem. If we want young people to have the resilience, the confidence and the knowledge to say no, we have to be fully committed to a comprehensive education programme across the UK.

The next area where the Minister needs to exercise care and caution is proportionality of sentencing. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act, sentences are linked to the harm caused by the drug possessed, supplied or produced—the more harmful the drug, the harsher the maximum sentence. Of course, there is judicial discretion in applying individual sentences, but the general approach of linking to relative harms is important.

The Bill represents a radical departure from previous attempts to control drugs, because it legally decouples controlled substances from an independent and objective assessment of the harm they cause. We understand why that may be appropriate. The process by which the ACMD determines the harm of a substance can be lengthy and resource intensive, which is precisely why the Home Office cannot keep up with the illicit market. It is difficult to introduce the concept of harm to the Bill without denying the Home Office the tools it needs to deal with that central problem.

It is because this Bill suggests such a radical change that we need carefully to consider the impact it will have when implemented. I am worried that we might end up in a situation where someone who is prosecuted for selling a weak psychoactive substance faces the possibility of the same seven-year custodial sentence as someone who sells a very dangerous substance. The Bill contains no classification system to differentiate between those two crimes. I fear that the proposed laws could lose the confidence of the public and the judicial system if the issue of proportionality is not looked at carefully. As the Minister will be aware, the issue has exercised the Home Affairs Committee.

I am particularly worried about the proportionality of sentencing for young people involved in social supply. It is not unusual for a number of young people to club together and for one person to buy substances off the internet and distribute them among friends, or even for one individual to sell a small amount to a friend. The Bill makes no distinction between those people and large-scale importers. We need to look at that.

Has the Minister considered providing credible measures for a relatively harmless substance to be excluded from the controls, if that is deemed appropriate? Conversely, if a new psychoactive substance proves to be particularly harmful, surely it should be removed from the scope of the Bill and controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Reviewing that may be an appropriate responsibility of the ACMD.

Another issue that needs careful consideration is how the police and prosecutors can both determine and prove that a substance is psychoactive. I am sure the Minister is aware that Professor Iverson, chair of the ACMD, has previously written to the Home Secretary warning her that we will have to rely on proxy measures of psychoactivity, such as in vitro neurochemical tests, in order to prove psychoactivity, but that they may not stand up in court.

We should take Professor Iversen’s warnings seriously. Although similar legislation in Ireland appears to have been broadly successful—given the statistics I quoted earlier—there have been only five successful prosecutions. Police in Ireland have admitted that that is because they find it difficult to prove the psychoactivity of substances. We want sellers to stop selling psychoactive substances voluntarily, and for consumers to stop purchasing the drugs. However, it is hard to imagine that that would work without any prosecutions at all. The law simply would not provide a credible deterrent.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I do not think anyone doubts the views that have made all of us give up a Friday to be here; everyone is here because they are concerned about the suffering of others and we want to alleviate it. We just do not agree about how we should go about it.

I believe that this is not just a tidying up of a small legal anomaly. It is, rather, a crossing of a Rubicon, as was mentioned earlier. It is changing and legalising the killing of one person by another, regardless of the reasons why we would want to carry that out.

The Bill’s weaknesses have been mentioned, such as the problem of finding general practitioners who would write a report. In actual fact, quite a lot would be willing to do that, but not so many would be willing to be involved in the act of assisted suicide. Where would the independent expert be found? Some 96% of palliative care specialists are utterly against this Bill. They object to the name of it; they consider what they do is assisted dying, and what this is is assisted suicide.

I do not want to talk about the small print, however. That will be explored over the day. My objection is basically in principle. Many Members will be aware of my interest; as a breast cancer surgeon for 30 years, I have been involved in the journey to death of many patients, but as a doctor I have never considered that death was a good treatment for anything, no matter what was wrong with anyone.

People would choose such an option for lots of reasons: the fear of being a burden, the fear of dying, and most of all the fear of suffering. The responsibility to deal with that lies with us. Who is making them feel that they are a burden—is it their family or their friends, or is it society? Who is letting them down in their palliative care? It is us. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) mentioned, the services are patchy in some areas. Not everyone has access to palliative care, but I started out in 1982 when women did not know when they went into theatre that they had breast cancer because we did not have the ability to diagnose it. I worked for an eminent professor in Glasgow, and we lived in the ward in those days, and I watched patients come back from theatre having had the lump removed. If it was cancer their breast was removed, and that was it—no choice. They found out they had cancer by groping themselves on the trolley, because if they had a lot of bandages and a drip, that meant they had lost their breast and they had cancer.

Watching people die of cancer was awful at that time. They were cachectic, they were in pain, and we had very limited hospice and very little palliative care support in the hospital. But 30 years later that has changed. Whereas 40% of patients would live 10 years then, now 80% do so. Our patients know exactly what operation they are going in for. They have hours of discussion with us, and until a few years ago I would have been involved in their journey if that cancer came back, in their palliation and in their terminal care.

That journey can lead to a beautiful death. The event that had the biggest impact on me as a junior doctor was the death of a lady whom I had looked after for many months. When I came on to the ward that night, the nurses said, “I think Lizzie’s going.” She was curled up in her bed, obviously quite upset, and when I asked her what was wrong, she said she was frightened and she did not know what she had to do. I said, “You don’t have to do anything. You just have to relax. You just have to let go.” We had the family in. West of Scotland male is not good on emotion or openness, so I took her son in and I spoke to her again about what was happening to the point where he could tell her that he loved her and how much he was going to miss her. I went for my tea, and when I came back she was sitting up holding court with the whole lot of them. I thought, “Oh no, we’ve called it wrong”, but she was gone in an hour, and it was beautiful. That made me commit to working with cancer patients. If I had not made it as a surgeon—which, as a woman at that time, I was told flatly that I would not—I would have gone into palliative care.

I have seen change in the journey for patients. We heard the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) describe the last two weeks of the life of her friend, and that is something that we see repeatedly—that the patient is ahead of the family. We are always utterly open with patients. We no longer have a situation in which a family member says, “Don’t tell my mum. Tell me, but don’t tell her.” The patient will always know, because the fear is that when they see their death coming, they will know that everyone has lied to them and they will be on their own.

My job was not just to look after the patient; it was to look after the whole family. All these illnesses are diseases of the whole family, and we want the family to be left with the knowledge that they did everything they could and were able to express their love at the end of their loved one’s life. Things have changed for cancer patients. I have not had a cancer patient ask me for a quick way out, an escape, for decades. We need to ensure that palliative care is offered to people with degenerative illnesses, of which we are all afraid.

When the public support this measure, they are not actually thinking about the last six months of a terminal illness; they are thinking about Alzheimer’s, about motor neurone disease and about Parkinson’s, none of which the Bill would address. It is therefore inevitable that this would migrate. As the hon. Member for Totnes said, we should support palliative care and we must ensure that it is available to people who are dying, regardless of their illness. We need to change our tone towards the people who live in our society, so that old and vulnerable people no longer feel that they should get out of the way.

All our horizons will narrow as we get older. Someone who was hill walking when they were 20 might not manage to do so when they are 80. I have seen patients who are grateful to be at home being wheeled out on to the patio in the sun and having a good blether with their son who has come home from London. They consider that a good day. We might consider it horrific, looking at it in advance, but when we get there we will have changed. We should support letting people live every day of their life until the end, and make sure that, as legislators, we provide the means for them to live and die with dignity and comfort. We should not say, “When you can’t thole it, take the black capsule.” We should vote for life and dignity, not for death.