State Pension Age (Women)

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why fairness needs to be applied to everybody, and in this case, there is a cohort of women who are simply not being treated fairly. Our state pension system is funded on the contributory principle. This is not a state benefit for which no prior commitment is involved, yet this group of women who have been paying national insurance contributions over many years in good faith and who have fulfilled their end of the deal face being short-changed retrospectively.

We need to bear in mind many other factors. Fewer than one in four women who qualify for the new state pension in 2016-17 will get the full amount. Right up to 2054, fewer women than men will qualify for the full standard pension. Women are significantly more likely than men to work part time, and to do so for longer periods throughout their working lives, largely driven by caring roles, as hon. Members have mentioned. They therefore tend to be under-pensioned.

I welcome the fact that the new single-tier pension will recognise periods of time spent caring, which will help in the future, and I acknowledge that the Government have made progress on shrinking the gender pay gap—an issue on which consultation is in place. Progress has been made, with more women in work than ever before. We have seen lots of generous reforms—on entitlement to free child care, the national living wage and so forth—but all those are far too late for a generation of women who relied on work without many of the benefits that we now take for granted, while bringing up their families and discharging their caring responsibilities. Because of the number of women who are going out to work, many others have caring responsibilities for grandchildren as well as having to hold down part-time jobs.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way again, because so many other Members wish to speak.

It is right for the rise in the pension age to reflect growing life expectancy, but a number of recent medical and actuarial studies show that life expectancy for women aged 65, 75, 85 and 95 fell in 2012, while rates among men continued to rise. There are big discrepancies in life expectancy among some of the poorest women in society, and, of course, those born in the 1950s—the ones whom we are discussing today—are the most reliant on the state pension, and therefore the most vulnerable to the changes. There are grounds for querying why members of that group are being hit disproportionately.

There is also the question of whether the women were given proper and adequate notice. I think we all agree that that clearly did not happen. The money expert Paul Lewis, who has helped to articulate this campaign so successfully, has given details about how little notice some women received:

“Approximately 650,000 women worst affected by the speed up— those born 6 April 1953 to 5 April 1955—were written to in…February 2012.

That means they got their letters between the ages of 57 and almost 59 that their pension age would not be 60.”

Some women received no notification at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on her outstanding opening speech, and the Backbench Business Committee on allocating time for this important debate. I am heartened to see the support from my Front-Bench colleagues, including my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), and my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green)—she is also my neighbour. I know that they all strongly support this campaign and the women in their constituencies who are affected by this issue. I congratulate the WASPI campaigners, who have worked tirelessly on this issue. They have now gained 107,000 signatures—perhaps 108,000 since the start of this debate.

The increases in the state pension age made by the Pensions Act 1995 and the Pensions Act 2011 have had a disproportionate impact on 1950s-born women. As we have heard, many received little or no notification of the changes, despite the Government saying that people must have 10 years’ notice of such changes. Indeed, the financial journalist Paul Lewis found that none of the 1950s-born women had been given 10 years' notice. In the worst case—we have heard about one of the worst cases from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman)—women were told at 57 and a half that their pension age would rise from 60 to 66. Women who expected to retire at 60 can now find themselves without a job, without a pension and without money to live on.

The former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has admitted that the Government made “a bad decision” over these changes. His excuse was that Ministers had not been properly briefed. It appears that civil servants did do a poor job on this legislation; astonishingly, the impact assessment for the 2011 Act states in its conclusion:

“Overall…based on the available evidence, the change to the previous timetable will not have a disproportionate impact on any group compared to another.”

[Dr Huq]

The fact that my hon. Friend had a recent debate in Westminster Hall on this very subject should send a message to the Government that people want action on it. Does she agree with my constituent Linda Gregory, who was born in 1953 and points out that she has been working since the age of 15 and therefore is being penalised even more than people entering the workplace at the age, which is the normal standard nowadays?

[Barbara Keeley]

I absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend says and I thank her for coming to that earlier debate.

It seems unbelievable that civil servants and Ministers could believe that taking billions in pensions away from a particular group, adding years to their state pension age and then not informing them in good time would not have a disproportionate impact on that group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said that to put this right we would have to raise income tax by 7p. No, we would not. We could stop spending on other things. We could stop doing things like giving more money to the children of dead millionaires in inheritance tax bungs. We could stop giving businesses cuts in corporation tax at the same time as saying to poor people, “You’ve got to get even poorer.” The truth is that this has been a choice.

Two days ago, the salaries of the chief executives of the top 100 FTSE companies passed the average annual wage of working men and women. That is the level of inequality in this country. At the same time, we are saying to this group of women, “Sorry, you’ve got to carry the can for the failures of global capitalism.” By and large, Conservative Members simply do not care, because they do not understand the reality of life at the sharp end. My mother was one of the women who worked all her life. She was in and out of jobs where she was never allowed to join a pension scheme, and she was only able to build up a secondary pension scheme, so in the end she died in relative poverty. My mother died 15 years ago, but things have not really changed for the majority of women in this country, particularly the group we are talking about.

My constituent Elizabeth Ainsley wrote me a long, heartfelt letter from which I will quote only small bits. She says:

“My pensionable age has changed twice once in 1995 from 60 to 64…to bring women in line with men and then again when I was not notified until I was age 59 with 5 years to work to my retirement age that this had been changed from 64 to 66. This is just not enough time to prepare.”

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. He has reminded me of an email I had from a constituent who also said she had been double-walloped. When she was younger, she did not think about these things, but now she has health problems and she worries that she will be knocking on jobseekers door if this goes on.

[Mr Anderson]

Every one of us in this room, particularly Conservative Members, could read out cases from people who have written to us and come to see us about the inequality and the disgrace that is going on today and should never have been allowed to happen.

My constituent Elizabeth goes on to say:

“I started work at age 16 and believed for 25 years that I would receive my pension at 60 only to have this changed not once but twice”

in her lifetime. She continues:

“I feel betrayed by the government and that women of my age have been discriminated against most of our working lives, denied the ability to prepare for our retirement and are now taking the biggest hit of all so the government can rush through the transition to equal retirement age to save money.”

I believe that the Minister is a decent man, but I am not sure that he will have the power or the authority today to do what we think should be done.

The ex-Minister responsible for this was Mr Webb, the Liberal Democrats’ human shield. Where are the Liberal Democrats today? Is anybody here from the Liberal Democrats? Perhaps they are ashamed of him, as they should be, for being a human shield for the austerity agenda that they forced through during five years in coalition. He says now that he made a mistake. He admits that it was an error and he was not properly briefed by people in the DWP.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South was absolutely right to say that this is a contract with the people of this country. Yet the people of this country had no say in that contract; there was no proper negotiation where they could say, “Let me have my say and you have yours.” It was a contract imposed on them, and it has been breached. That needs to be put right and we need to do the right thing.