Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

I take on board what you say, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am coming to a conclusion. I am more than happy to meet colleagues, but I am afraid the venue would have to be negotiated. It is not every day that I go to Northern Ireland, but if the hon. Lady wants a meeting with me I am more than happy to meet her here in London.

We have ensured that more people are saving for their retirement by requiring employers to enrol their staff on to a pension with our auto-enrolment scheme. In addition to those reforms, we have continued to protect and build on a range of other pensioner benefits, including a permanent increase to cold weather payments, protection of winter fuel payments, and protection of free bus passes.

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

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Vara]

I will not give way. Hopefully the hon. Lady heard what Madam Deputy Speaker directed.

We are providing greater security and choice for people in retirement, while also ensuring that the system is sustainable for the future. That is a record on pensions and pensioners of which Conservative Members can be proud. Parliament has extensively debated accelerating the changes to the state pension age. We listened to all arguments for and against at the time of the Pensions Act 2011, and we made transitional arrangements.

We are far behind other countries in Europe on equalisation—Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Greece have already equalised the pension age for men and women. We must look to the future, not persist in looking backwards. These changes are about putting our pensions system on a secure financial footing, rather than continuous confusion for those affected and further debate. We should build on the high levels of awareness that we already have, and continue to promote flexibility, choice and security for older people. There are no plans on the part of the Government to make policy changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Women who work for fair transitional pension arrangements have been accused by some of being emotional. There is certainly one emotion that unites most of them, and that is anger: anger about the incompetence and stubbornness that have failed to address these issues over many years, and anger about the fact that the arrangements that they made for their retirement were based on either wrong information or no information at all from the Government, and have now been overturned.

Who are the women most affected? Many of them are carers; one lady who wrote to me is caring for a mother in her nineties. Others are women who have had to retire early because of ill health. Yet others are women who have been made redundant in their late fifties and early sixties, and there were a lot of those under the coalition Government. All of them thought that they could just about manage until their state pensions kicked in, only to find that the Government had moved the goalposts, a fact of which they had been totally unaware.

These are also women who have been disadvantaged throughout their working lives. Many of them started work before the Equal Pay Act 1970, and certainly before the cases involving equal pay for work of equal value. Many brought up their children when there was very little childcare, and a number had to take low-paid part-time jobs to fit in with their children’s school hours. As for those who gave up work to look after their children, they were, at that time, given no pension credits for their caring responsibilities, and when they went back to work they found themselves without enough time to build up a decent private pension. Many women have now found themselves redundant, but are being kept in the workforce and put through the Work programme as if they were workshy layabouts, although they have worked all their lives.

Ministers ought to hang their heads in shame for the way they have treated these women. It is not enough, apparently, for this Government to damage women’s prospects in every Budget they have introduced and make them bear the biggest burden of cuts; they also have to damage their retirement prospects—and this is the Government who tell us that they are on the side of strivers. Not if those strivers are women, they aren’t. They have put nearly 2.5 million women in an impossible position. So contemptuous of those women are they that the Secretary of State does not even come here to respond to debates. No doubt he is out fabricating some new fantasy about how our security is threatened by countries like Belgium and Luxembourg, those well-known bellicose nations.

However, the real culprit, whom we have never seen at all, is the Chancellor. Like Macavity the Mystery Cat, whenever there is trouble, he is not here. It is he who decided that women should bear an unfair burden of the cuts. It is he who has made sure that they are paying the price for this Government’s policies. In future, Ministers should listen. They should come to the Dispatch Box with more than the platitudes that we have heard before from this Minister—

[Dr Huq]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Helen Jones]

I am sorry; I do not have time.

Ministers should come here and introduce transitional arrangements for these women. They have been the backbone of this country for years, many of them are saving us millions by caring for others, and they have been treated with gross unfairness and contempt by this Government.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, 1950s-born women are not usually seen as a militant group. They were born and raised in the era of “Hi honey, I’m home,” spotless perfection, domestic bliss and Formica, but the situation they now find themselves in is far from perfect.

I have only been an MP since May, but, as several Members have mentioned, including the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), this feels a bit like groundhog day. This is the third time I have raised the matter, and at other times I could not even get into Westminster Hall because it was standing room only. The TV show “Desperate Housewives” comes to mind, although the valiant WASPI women are far from desperate.

The Government have to act. The public are making their voices heard, and the Government are on the wrong side of public opinion. It feels like groundhog day because not only is what we are saying falling on deaf ears, but there is a broken record routine in the way we are told that there is no money left. At the same time, we constantly hear that economic growth is returning and things are looking rosy. The two things cannot be reconciled with each other.

The people we are talking about have been hit twice, as everyone has said. “Double-whammy” is the phrase that keeps coming up in the emails that I receive. They were hit in 1995 and 2011. I have heard the rejoinder from Government Members that the 1997 Labour Government did not do anything about the 1995 changes, but surely the Conservative Government and civil service of that time should have put a work plan in place. We hear that not all people were notified, but there should have been some provision in place for that to keep happening. Presumably because that Government were saving money on their communications strategy or something, that did not happen. Anyway, as many people have said, we are where we are.

Like many Members here, I have received representations from many people, including Michele Carlile, who was born in 1954, and Linda Gregory, who was born in 1953. Some have pointed out that they started work at 15. One of them said to me, “That’s probably a good 10 years before you did, my dear.” The circumstances that these people faced was different from what happens today. We must remember that the Equal Pay Act 1970 did not come into force until a Labour Government made it happen in 1976. These people brought up children before the free childcare and nurseries and all the other things that Labour Governments have brought in. We should therefore be sympathetic to their plight.

I think that in this debate people have confused the WASPI petition and the wording of the motion. Nobody is arguing against equality. Nobody is saying that there should be compensation at the levels that these people would have received. All that is being asked for is transitional arrangements to soften the blow. Some of the people in the campaign have been neutral money people, such as Paul Lewis of the BBC’s “Money Box”, a former constituent of mine, and Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com.

I urge Government Members to vote with us tonight, simply for transitional arrangements, since this Government have found so much money down the back of the sofa for so many things. The former Pensions Minister in the coalition, Steve Webb, has admitted that people are hard done by, so in the 17 seconds that I have left, let me say that this great pensions swindle must end now.