State Pension: Women born in the 1950s

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend, who even got a naughty bit of applause from the Public Gallery.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing this debate and on her passionate opening speech. It is important that we keep this issue on the parliamentary agenda, and that we continue to speak up for the women who have been so adversely affected by the changes.

Like other hon. Members, I have received a significant number of letters and emails from women who have been badly affected by the impact of the equalisation of the state pension age. I will use my time to share just a few of the experiences of the 6,100 women in my constituency who have been affected by all the various changes since 1995.

Janice wrote to me:

“I was born in 1956 and expected my pension when I was 60. The government has moved the goalposts twice and I now have to wait until I am 66…I am 63 and have left work to spend quality time with my 79-year-old husband. This has not been an easy decision as I am living without my pension.”

Then there is Carol, who wrote:

“I only received a letter from the DWP four years before I was 60, so had very little notice at all.”

Carol has a private pension, but will not receive her state pension until she is 66. She is caring for her 89-year-old mother, and two of her granddaughters.

Susie Donkin, who was born in 1957, received notice only two years before she turned 60 that she would not receive her pension until she was 66. Another of my constituents, Sue, put it all succinctly when she wrote to me that:

“Women have so much against them. In the past they have had the burden of looking after the children and unable to build careers as men did…wages were not equal and opportunities for married women were not the same either.”

The WASPI women need action now. They have already waited long enough, and many are suffering real hardship and are basically destitute, as we have heard. It is totally unacceptable that the Government are simply ignoring the calls of those women. I ask the Minister to please listen to their calls now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I was going to come to that, but I will turn to that point now. I will deal first with general life expectancy and then with the point on healthy life expectancy.

On general life expectancy, I was going to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who is no longer in his place; I know we all have other commitments in other bits of the House today. The Office for National Statistics releases period life expectancy by local area of the UK, but not by individual parliamentary constituency. Life expectancy at birth in Glasgow is 73 years for men and 78 years for women, and it has increased by four years for men and more than two years for women since 2001 to 2003; it has increased in every area of the UK over the same period. Cohort life expectancy at birth in Scotland is currently 87 for men and 90 for women, and cohort life expectancy at age 65 in Scotland is currently 19 years for men and 21 years for women.

I turn to healthy life expectancy. The latest ONS statistics show that 65-year-olds in the UK are expected to live over half their remaining life in good health, at 11.2 years for women and 10.4 years for men. Healthy life expectancy as a whole has increased over recent decades, and healthy life expectancy at age 65 as a proportion of total life expectancy has been relatively stable since the year 2000. I apologise that I do not have the data for the specific area of the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), but I am happy to write to him on the specifics. I know his constituency very well; it is down the road from mine. In Scotland, healthy life expectancy at age 65 has increased in recent years. I believe that addresses that point.

I stand here defending not only the Conservative Government but the coalition Government and the Labour Government who were in power for 13 years, as well as the nine different Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and 11 Pensions Ministers over that time, some of whom are still serving in this House today: the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman); the Deputy Speaker, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton); and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and various other Members such as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), all of whom supported the policy changes that took place because of the increase in life expectancy.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I was waiting until he finalised his point. This issue goes all the way back to when it started in 1995, under various Governments who had decades of opportunities to let people know about the changes. The ball has got to stop somewhere. The buck that gets passed around has stopped here with this Government. This is real now. These women are being left destitute. Given all the failures of the past, will he now do something to help the women rather than just say, “Oh, well, it’s not just me. Other people could have done something and didn’t.”? It is him now and he can do something about it.

[Guy Opperman]

The issue of communication has been addressed on an ongoing basis in this House and in the Work and Pensions Committee, which did a highly detailed assessment of the matter a couple of years ago. The matter began in 1993 and received considerable publicity at the time. Since 1995, the Government have gone to significant lengths to communicate the changes in various ways—

[Mrs Hodgson]

indicated dissent.

[Guy Opperman]

She asked me the question—let me finish. The Government have gone to significant lengths to communicate the changes to ensure that those affected were fully aware of their rights. That has been done using a range of formats, communication methods and styles—as I have explained, it has been gone through in a multitude of ways by the Work and Pensions Committee—including communication campaigns, information online, and individual letters posted to approximately 1.2 million women who were directly affected by the 1995 Act changes. A further 5 million letters were sent later to those affected by the 2011 Act changes between January 2012 and November 2013. Between April 2000 and the end of September 2018, the Department for Work and Pensions provided more than 24 million personalised state pension statements, and we continue to encourage individuals to request a personalised state pension statement.

On transitional arrangements, the coalition Government and previous Governments gave careful consideration to a range of options that were debated at great length in this House on repeated occasions. The matter was debated during the passage of the 1995 Act, the 2007 Act, the 2011 Act and the 2014 Act. Any amendment to the current legislation that created a new inequality between men and women would unquestionably be highly dubious as a matter of law. Secondly, causing younger people to bear a greater share of the cost of the pension system in that way would be unfair and would undermine the principle of intergenerational fairness that is integral to our state pension reforms.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On that point about intergenerational fairness, we have to factor in the unfairness that the 1950s women face for all the reasons that have been set out: historical reasons such as paying a lower stamp, women not working as often as men, and spending time at home when they had children. With regard to intergenerational fairness, I think the younger generation accept that it is different for the 1950s women.

[Guy Opperman]

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but that matter was unquestionably considered by female Ministers such as the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. As the matter has been debated on an ongoing basis, it has been an evolutionary process throughout the past 23 years. I am the latest of many different Ministers who have stood in this post, and I continue to defend the actions of Governments and Ministers who went before me.