Richard Graham
Main Page: Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)Department Debates - View all Richard Graham's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
This debate is in some ways a rerun of one held in December in Westminster Hall organised by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who has a long track record of campaigning on this issue. I congratulate my Work and Pensions Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), on bringing this up and bringing to life, in a sense, the emotional feelings of many women of the ages most affected by changes to the state pension. She did so in a way that everyone here can relate to, because we all have pensioner constituents, and indeed members of our own families, who are affected.
However, there is a risk of overstating the case. My Select Committee colleague will not, I hope, mind my saying that when she said that nobody was aware of the 1995 changes because there was no correspondence, that was an exaggeration of the situation. We will never know exactly who was communicated with or who, probably most importantly, noticed and paid attention to it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Richard Graham
I will not give way yet.
We do know, though, that in 2004 the previous Government did a study on this through the DWP, as Labour Members will remember. That study concluded that three quarters of those affected had been communicated with effectively. Opposition Members may care to comment on that.
Richard Graham
Not at the moment.
The fact is that quite a lot of people were told about this at the time and thought it was a long way off and therefore they did not have to pay attention to it, while others were not communicated with and have therefore found this to be a difficult wake-up call. There are lessons on communication that I will come on to and that I hope the Minister will address.
Richard Graham
A lot of people want to speak, so let me carry on for the moment.
The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South was right to quote the previous Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, as saying that not everyone knew about this. He has accepted that, as I think we all recognise. None the less, the argument that no transitional arrangements were made—arrangements that Opposition Members are calling for—is wrong. A significant transitional arrangement and concession was made in 2011 that affected 250,000 people and cost the Government—the taxpayer—£1.3 billion, which was a significant amount of money at the time. That arrangement was made because the then Pensions Minister and the then Government recognised advice from the Department saying that the waiting time for some women born in the 1950s had increased to as much as two years, and they wanted to reduce it to 18 months to benefit those 250,000 people.
What is interesting is that while the motion calls for further transitional arrangements, it does not spell out, nor has any Member who has spoken so far spelt out, exactly what transitional arrangements are being called for. Were the intention—
Richard Graham
Hold on a moment—let me finish what I am saying.
Were the intention simply to change all the arrangements for women born in the 1950s and go back to the original proposal, that would, I believe—the Minister might want to put a more detailed figure on it—cost the taxpayer about £10 billion. Yesterday we had the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), calling for changes to universal credit that were not costed and for which he offered no alternative in terms of where the money would come from. Today we have a proposed transitional arrangement that might cost £10 billion, but its detail has not been spelled out, and neither has its exact cost or how it would be paid for.
I believe that it is incumbent on all of us as MPs partly to represent the emotional feelings of our constituents, as has been done very well by a number of Members today, but also to reflect on the reality, the cost and the implications of what is being proposed, which remains an open question.
Gavin Robinson
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that we had a quest for equalisation in pensions that has resulted in an iniquitous outcome for the women we are discussing? Social justice demands that whatever the transitional arrangements should be—he makes a strong point about that—he and other members of the DWP Committee will work to find arrangements that would ease the iniquitous outcome of this equalisation.
Richard Graham
In fact, the Committee had that discussion and we heard evidence from Women Against State Pension Inequality, which is a good, reasonable and sensible campaign. On the whole, its evidence to the Committee focused on the issue of communication, partly so that lessons can be learned so that when future announcements are made about what will happen in 10 years’ time, they are communicated effectively to those who will be affected. We do not want to end up in a similar situation in 10 years’ time, with another generation of women complaining about not knowing.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend, like me, hope that when the Minister sums up he will address the failure of the communication strategy since 1995 and right up to the current day? A constituent of mine was told in October that they had qualified for their state pension, but a few weeks later they were told that they had another three years to go. We really need to address that problem.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I am sure the Minister will comment on communication. As I said in the debate in December, there are clear lessons and it would be good to have future changes clarified. I know that a further review is planned in 2017, and longevity continues to increase. The average life expectancy for women, as projected by the Office for National Statistics, has already increased by 2.6 years since the 1995 proposals, and Adair Turner, whose report led to the consensus that this House held for many years, said not very long ago that, if he had done the report now, he would have planned for faster changes to state pension ages.
The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South rightly said that at some point we will want to discuss the effect of the future state pension on women. In answer to her point about discrimination against women, I think it is really important that all Members and our constituents are aware that the new state pension will be much fairer to women than the old system. National insurance credits will be given for years taken out of work for caring or for bringing up a family. This is the first time this has happened in the history of the pension—it is a really important point. It will give women the same entitlement as they would get from national insurance contributions through earnings. That is a significant change and I would have thought that those Members who tabled the motion would want to allude to it.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I have listened very carefully to the hon. Gentleman. He has said that in 2011 the Government made a policy decision to accelerate and that they failed to communicate the effects of that decision to the many people affected. Why does he therefore conclude that the Government do not have a moral obligation to put that mistake right?
Richard Graham
Actually, what I said was that the communication issue goes back to 1995, when I certainly was not in this House. For the bulk of the period from 1995 to 2010, the right hon. Gentleman’s party was in power. There is no point in pointing fingers at different parties, but that period is at the heart of the issue of communication, which the motion addresses.
On the question of what good advice we can now give those of our constituents who are not sure what they are going to receive in retirement, it is important that they ask for a statement. That is what the Pension Wise campaign, which is available to everybody, free of charge, is there to do. People should ask for their statement. Some 500,000 people have already taken advantage of that. It is the most effective communications tool and we should be using it to make sure that everybody—women and men—approaching retirement knows what they will receive.