Pensions

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on raising this issue, and all the women who are attending the debate—and by that I imply a criticism of all the men who have decided to stay away.

One day they will make a film about this issue. It will be a British film, made on a small budget and inspired by a sense of outrage that such an unfair treatment of British women could have persisted into the 2010s. It will join a fine tradition of films which have put on record the past struggles women have had to be heard. Recent ones include the 2010 film “Made in Dagenham” and the 2015 film “Suffragette”—both subjects that the establishment of the day hoped would go away once the fuss died down. But it did not, and the protests of the women finally won out.

The WASPI women are in that tradition. Indeed, their many branches wear the suffragette colours with pride. They persist in protesting the unfair treatment that women born in the 1950s have been given by the Government’s pensions policy, as expressed with increasing severity in the Pensions Acts of 1995 and 2011. The film of their story will detail how, in trying honourably to remedy one inequality—bringing women’s and men’s retirement ages into harmony—the Government of the day perpetrated another, subjecting 2.6 million women to unexpected delays to their pension dates, with too little warning, and throwing many of them into genuine hardship.

The film will show, with perhaps only slight exaggeration, bumbling officials—I suggest Jim Broadbent or Hugh Bonneville—overwhelmed with detail about changing demographics and passing on conflicting advice to the Ministers concerned. A lead role in the film will be the Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, who will be shown as well-meaning but confused—a part for Hugh Grant, I think. Steve Webb was the longest-serving Minister at the DWP and effected important and successful changes, such as the triple lock on pensions that benefited many and continues to do so, and the automatic enrolment by businesses of their workers into pension schemes—all fine reforms by a man whose word we could surely trust.

That being so, Steve Webb will have written his own script for the film in June 2015, after he had left office and lost his parliamentary seat. He told the Institute for Government:

“There was one very early decision that we took about state pension ages, which we would have done differently if we’d been properly briefed, and we weren’t … we’d put an announcement out … and we just hadn’t thought through what we were doing … we had to make a difficult decision … 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 … so that’s a decision that we got wrong”.


Those are the Minister’s own words. Incidentally, Steve Webb also spoke of the fine support he usually had from his civil servants—“very good people”, he called them—but not on this occasion.

The film will show Steve Webb going, cap in hand, to David Cameron, leader of the coalition Government in which he served, and asking for some money back from the savings that his department had made. He needed this money to soften the blow but came up against George Osborne and the steely men of the Treasury—male judgments being passed on women’s lives. He got only a third of the £3 billion he asked for and thus was the crisis launched.

Like any good film, this one will fill in the background: the genuine poverty that WASPI women are suffering because they were not given time to plan. We will see piles of brown envelopes stacked up, not delivered or left unopened at the wrong addresses. I have had arguments made to me that the news of the changes was in fact dispatched to the women concerned. Perhaps the film will show us the many ways the post can go astray and publicity campaigns be overlooked. We will see women who were facing retirement at 60 suddenly trying to extend their employment and being refused, trying at the jobcentre and suffering the humiliation which at their age is deeply distressing for them.

I can imagine the story being told of one such character—let us say she will be played by Julie Walters. She left school at 15, has worked all her life since, paying the contributions expected of her from her meagre wages, and now she is bewildered that the world is denying her the support she had always been led to believe was hers by right. We can imagine the brutal cross-examination at the jobcentre—Simon Russell Beale in a cameo role, I think—and the requirement to seek out employment before she becomes eligible for any benefit to ease her poverty.

We now live in a time that is finely tuned to the lives of women and how, simply because of their gender, their experiences of life are different from those of men in so many ways—equal pay, sexual harassment. We are increasingly conscious that simply because you are a woman you should not be singled out for particular treatment—of whatever kind. There is a groundswell of popular feeling that this should not be so. The WASPI women were born long before the equal pay legislation and well before the Equality Act. They have lived their lives under the disadvantages that were once the lot of all women. The pensions legislation perpetuates that disadvantage—no adequate notice, no time to prepare and no adequate transitional arrangements to ease any hardship. The various suggestions that have been made for transitional arrangements do not meet their needs. They now ask to meet the department to discuss and resolve this continuing and shameful situation.

Only last month there was a majority of 288 votes to none in the other place for the Motion calling on the Government,

“to improve transitional arrangements for women born on or after 6 April 1951 who have been adversely affected by the acceleration of the increase to the state pension age”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/17; col. 366.]

The film poster might well read: “They were old. They were women. They were condemned to be poor”. I appeal to the Minister to make sure that this does not happen.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords that this is a timed debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, is going to speak in the gap, so we need to take 30 seconds off the other speakers. If noble Lords could please stick to the time, that would be helpful.

Pensions: Women’s State Pension Age

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the concerns of the Women Against State Pension Inequality about changes to the state pension age for women.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

The Government have no plans to revisit this policy. A substantial concession, worth £1.1 billion, to lessen the impact of increases to women’s state pension age is already in place. No women will experience increases of more than 18 months. In fact, for 81% of women, the increase will not exceed 12 months. Introducing further concessions could not be justified given the imperative to focus public resources on helping those most in need.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. He clearly does not acknowledge the scale of the injustice and the growing scale of the protest: 2.5 million women have been affected by the botched plans to align the pension ages and it is bringing increasing hardship to women who are now retired and have no income and no pension. These are women who have paid into their pension plan for decades, often since they were in their teens. This summer, the WASPI women, as they are known, held protests in 131 towns. On 11 October, they presented 200 constituency petitions to the Commons, backed by 80 MPs. This campaign is not going away. When will the Government address its cause?

[Lord Freud]

I can only repeat what the Pensions Minister, Richard Harrington, said, absolutely and explicitly, that,

“no further moves will be made to assist those women, all of whom will benefit in time from the significant increase in the new state pension”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/16; col. 566.]

State Pension Age

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

I assure the noble Baroness that this is not about unpicking anything. This was legislated for in the Pensions Act 2014. We are merely following the legislation that was introduced.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this Statement from the Minister and the setting up of an independent inquiry. I can only offer my sympathy to the chairman because, as she knows, pension age is a hot potato politically. There was a debate in the Commons last week about the whole case of the baby-boomer, or WASPI, women, and a Motion, which was lost by only a few votes, calling for action from the Government on transitional provision for these women. Will the Minister, who in a previous incarnation showed great sympathy for these baby-boomer women, express some concern that this is not within the remit of the newly appointed review?

[Baroness Altmann]

I stress to the noble Baroness and noble Lords that if there are any issues they would like to raise with the independent reviewer—lessons to be learned from the past or issues that should be considered for the future—they should do so. It is an independent review, looking at all the relevant factors.

State Pension: Women

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the new single-tier state pension, what provision they have made for informing women in their 50s of their pension expectations.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to launch this topical Question for Short Debate arising from issues that have currently swept the country and the media involving the transition to new pension arrangements. This is a small gathering, but a distinguished one, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the issues that we have to raise.

The population is ageing; we know that. Life expectancy is currently 81 in the UK, and we now expect to work longer than we once did. Retirement will come later than it used to. We also believe in equality, so it is quite right that women and men should retire at the same age. This is all right and proper, and thoroughly understood by the population of this country. Legislation towards later and equal pensions was begun in 1995 and amended in 2011. The transitional arrangements towards that desire have, however, been a disaster. Through incompetence and faulty communications, many people, mostly women, have been left totally in the dark about what to expect and, as a consequence, suddenly presented with hardship, injustice and what some of them, writing to me, have called theft. I will be giving evidence of that in just a moment.

First, the changes to the state pension to be rolled out in April next year promise a fairer deal for women, but the new figures show that of the 400,000 expected to claim the new state pension, only 20,000 women will get the full flat rate of about £155 per week. There are reasons for this. Many women will not be reaching the state pension age over those years. They once expected to, of course—they expected to until quite recently. It has come as a shock to some 700,000 of them that they will not only not receive their pension until later but, as a consequence of this delay, will be missing out on even more than they had expected.

Complicated matters get more complicated. I put it to the Minister that serious issues of communication with those affected by the changes must be addressed— and urgently. The changes begin within a year. How much immediate contact is the DWP making with those whose features depend on these changing arrangements? What advice systems exist, and what information centres? What initiatives are in place to respond to the needs of these often distraught and deprived women? Why women? Women outnumber men in the pension population, and only a minority of women reaching state pension age have been entitled to the full basic state pension. As author John Macnicol defines it, we are talking about poverty among older women.

We know that transitions can go wrong because they already have. The move to bring forward women’s pension age towards that of men has left some 700,000 women who were on the brink of reaching what they believed was pensionable age completely bereft. They have come together as a powerful lobby—Women against State Pension Inequality, or WASPI—and are finding that their cause is met with sympathy and outrage when they explain their plight.

Many dozens of them have written to me. Let me give some examples of their distress.

“I started work at the age of 15, I have never claimed a penny benefits and worked continually until reaching 57, when because of a heart condition I took early retirement on the understanding that my pension would be forthcoming in the next few years. I have never had any communications from the government about the changes”.

Another writes:

“I resigned my teaching career to care for my husband when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. On his subsequent death at 60 years of age I have found myself with half his teacher’s pension … and no state pension at 60 as I had planned for”.

Liz writes to me:

“I started work—part time—when I was 13 and I have always worked. Throughout my working life I understood that I would be able to take my state pension at the age of 60 and planned towards this. I now have to wait until I am nearly 66. The short notice given has made it impossible to save enough to cover the shortfall … The complete lack of notice given for a specific group of women … means that they have been treated very shabbily”.

Karen writes to me:

“I am a divorced woman of 60: I have no option but to claim ESA as I cannot work due to health issues … If it wasn’t for the fact the council are paying me housing benefit I would literally be on the streets”.

Here is a man’s voice:

“So let me get this right. We expect women to have time off to have children, earn on average 80% of what men earn, and now without fair and proper warning have imposed on them to work another 6 years. Is this the price of equality for women?”.

There are many more examples. One writes:

“I have worked as a nurse since the age of 18”.

Another writes:

“I worked solidly since I was 17”.

What emerges from those letters is that these women, deprived suddenly of their expected pensions, are often ailing, looking after an ailing partner, caring for a much older parent or may themselves be frail. Many are made redundant and, at the age of 58 or 59, are in no position to find other work.

One wonders what William Beveridge, architect of the nation’s national insurance project, would make of this unexpected occasion of want and injustice. Existing plans show a complete lack of understanding of the reality of these women’s lives. They are not cheats or scroungers; they are honourable citizens who, after a lifetime’s work and often 40-plus years of contributions, are seeking the pensions to which those contributions entitle them.

Many—almost all—of the women complain that they were not informed of the changes. The department made modest protest that it had informed them. Steve Webb, the former Pensions Minister, defending the record of communications before the Work and Pensions Committee, added to his evidence:

“Did we miss some people? Probably, when you move house do you tell the DWP and tell them your new address?”.

Some people? The department missed a large part of 700,000 women. This matter of communication of pension changes to those who are entitled is still in play. The WASPI group has raised a petition of more than 40,000 signatures. Those people want their case reviewed and compensating considerations brought in to redress the injustice.

The arrival of the new single-tier pension is meant to be cost-neutral, but it is not likely to be so. The Government must examine the provisions to see whether within their revenues they cannot find ways to accommodate the needs of those women. Pension changes read as bold and logical when they are set out on paper, but they all involve transitional adaptations. That is where the Government continually fall short of what is expected. The same applies to the recent freedoms given to pensioners to access and spend their pension pots and annuities. The proposal sounded like a new freedom, and was greeted as such. Yet we already hear of plenty of scams as perhaps naive older people are offered unrealistic promises by unscrupulous operators. Announcements of policy are all very well, but they are only the start. Will the Government undertake to remedy the many shortcomings to their communication with, and advice to, the pensioners of this country?

State Pension: Equalisation

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to compensate the women deprived of their expected pensions by the increase in the state pension age under the Pensions Act 2011.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)]

My Lords, removing state pension age gender inequality by 2018 and increasing pension age to 66 by 2020 was voted on in both Houses, and there are no plans to change it. The more than £30 billion cost of retaining the previous timetable could not be justified, and the Government made a concession in 2011, worth more than £1 billion, limiting maximum increases to 18 months.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. There are 700,000 women caught in this brutal pensions trap, and they are already in their 60s. They had hoped to be drawing their pensions, but in some cases, even after 45 qualifying years, they currently have no pension, no pensioner benefits, often no job—having been made redundant—and no right to claim jobseeker’s allowance. What does the Minister suggest they live on?

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I do have sympathy with the women affected. However, I assure the House that they are eligible for the same in-work, out-of-work and disability benefits as men of their age, and for the new state pension.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, in considering the implications of this Bill for our society, I invoke the judgment of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations and acclaimed founder of the economic theory that gave birth to economic liberalism and the free market economy, who is a hero in many people’s eyes. Adam Smith was not just an economist; he was also a philosopher. In his work The Theory of Moral Sentiments he expressed concerns that man in society had obligations other than to give free rein to his ambitions and self-interest. He wrote:

“How selfish-soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him”.

From this sprang what is called caring conservatism, a concept already referred today by my noble friend Lady Hollis. It has had a good run for its money, finding expression in Disraeli’s one-nation politics and, in our own day, in David Cameron’s big society.

That very concept is currently being gouged out and hollowed by the cruelties attendant on this Bill. We have been living for some time within a sea change of outlook on the part of our Governments to the public realm and the obligations of the state to care for its citizens. We have seen its impact on civic society. Even the Prime Minister has noticed. In his letter to the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council, he expressed his concern at the cuts to services: elderly day centres, children’s centres, libraries and such. In response, the council leader, a Conservative, wrote:

“I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72 m or 37% as a ‘slight fall’”.

Other local councils are similarly up in arms at the scale of what they are having to cut: libraries, museums, galleries, sports facilities, parks and playgrounds, children’s centres, youth clubs, after-school and holiday clubs, health and safety inspections. All and more are being stripped from the public realm.

Now with this welfare Bill claiming to promote employment we see real cruelty in dealing with people. In the service of whatever ideology or economic imperative these policies are promoting, their scale is now indefensible. This Bill deliberately hits those who are already poor, disabled or young. I ask the Minister to explain in what way this does anything to eliminate the prevailing direction of our society towards ever-greater divisions between rich and poor and how that is defensible in the name of caring conservatism.

Let me now refer to another ideology altogether. I was part of a cultural delegation to China in 1983 when the diktats of Chairman Mao were in full swing, including the one-child family policy. A Chinese friend I met there took me aside and explained that he and his wife had defied the ruling and had two children, for which he had been demoted and financially penalised. Our delegation was scandalised. I little thought that some decades later a Bill before Parliament would be discriminating between the worth of one child and another in the same family. I am equally scandalised today and I am not alone. Faith groups across the country —Baptist, Jewish, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Quaker, Methodist, the United Reformed Church and the Caritas Social Action Network, which is the Catholic bishops—have expressed concerns about Clauses 11 and 12 limiting financial support to the first two children in any family. The government assessment estimates this measure will affect 640,000 families by 2020-21, which will mean at least 2 million children will be affected. We are not China but we are seeking by economic policies to limit family size.

Clause after clause of this Bill attacks the vulnerable. Clauses 7 and 8 lowering the benefit cap will affect 120,000 households forcing—so leaked DWP documents suggest—40,000 children below the poverty line. How can we then reduce poverty and its damning statistics? Clauses 6 and 4 will take care of that, by repealing the existing income-based measures of poverty and replacing them with so-called life chance indicators.

The whole area of disability and assessment, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Low, will need to be carefully scrutinised. While welcoming certain aspects of the Bill’s intentions, Parkinson’s UK is worried, as are many charities, about the impact assessment for Clause 13 to cover the known problems with work capability assessment. We can begin with Clause 1 and ask that the reporting obligations are confirmed.

The Bill flies defiantly in the face of caring conservatism. Its measures, meant to promote employment, need to be scrutinised clause by clause against the damage they will do to the well-being of all our citizens.

Culture: Cinema

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, next year the Royal Opera House expects more people to see performances of its work in the cinema than in the opera house, exceeding the 670,000 a year who visit the opera house. By cinema standards, that is small stuff; it is nothing like the audiences for blockbusters with their budgets of millions for promotion. However, it is telling because it eliminates the gulf between art and cinema that my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who introduced this debate, mentioned. Is cinema art? We do not need to ask any more because the art is in the cinemas. People are now using cinemas for a great many different kinds of programme.

The abolition of the UK Film Council in 2010 and its closure in 2011 came as a terrific shock. Why did it happen? It was done with no consultation and no understanding of why it was created in the first place. The idea was for the BFI to deal with the culture of film and for the Film Council to promote the industry. Of course, the intentions would overlap, but I know that because I served on both, as a board member of the BFI from 1992 and its chair from 1999, and then on the UK Film Council until 2002.

The UK Film Council’s tasks were commercial. Why did this Government abolish it? The council took seriously the matter of distribution—getting more people to see films and breaking the grip of the big franchises on the cinema chains. John Woodward invited distributors and cinema managers on to the council. They pioneered unusual ways of showing films. We plumbed the archives held in towns such as Manchester, Mansfield and Bradford to show archive films on giant screens in the football grounds. We negotiated schemes with multi-screen cinemas to take over those screens that were not doing good business and earmarked them for showing old movies from the BFI archive. We showed classics such as “Brief Encounter” and the Ealing comedies. All these were projects to promote film. What was the UK Film Council doing wrong?

Since then everything has moved to digital and there are loads of new ideas for showing film. The Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre are now on show in cinemas. There are also little local enterprises. An unnamed donor recently provided for the installation of the latest screen facilities in Primrose Hill library, which we had just rescued from Camden neglect. Numerous television channels run and rerun movies because the appetite for storytelling and brilliant images is insatiable. But the structure of the industry is not meeting the need. Funding for small-scale films by ambitious but unproven talent is the hardest of all to provide, while the unavailability of films in rural areas and most of our small towns is deplorable. Also, while benefiting hugely from the existence of films for their screens, the broadcasters are making a less than commensurate investment in them.

The cancellation of the UK Film Council and the 10% cut in grant in aid to the BFI has positively hindered the future progress of British film, but none the less it persists. Our creative record is outstanding and our skills are recognised worldwide. But as the January 2012 report by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, says, there is much to be done. I believe that the BFI has been loaded with too many diverse responsibilities, and although it is doing a fine job of making steady progress with its five-year plan, the burden of what it is now responsible for requires support from all sides of the industry.

I would ask the Government to back in more positive ways the many small businesses that make up the film industry in this country. Small businesses are supposed to be the sector that the Government favour most. Well, here they are. We need small cinemas in every town. I can give an example of the Aldeburgh Cinema, which I know well. It is supported by volunteers and makes a steady contribution to the year-round Aldeburgh Festival. It has its own documentary festival. It is not just small cinemas that need support, but all the small industries involved: cutting rooms, editing channels, costumiers, make-up conglomerates, set designers, script consultancies, independent producers, agents and publicity companies. All of these come together in miraculous synergy to forward our chances of winning Oscars, BAFTAs and universal recognition. Will the Government please do more to recognise success and help to uphold and further the interests of those who make it possible?

Violence Against Women

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for bringing forward this debate and I thank all the other speakers for such an informed session. In recent days I have read many thousands of words about the initiatives that people are taking and I am really impressed. There are initiatives from the Home Office, from Europe, from the police and from the UN. I read that 125 countries now have laws that penalise domestic violence. This is a positive demonstration of the will of civilised legislators to bring an end to what they all agree is pernicious behaviour, yet I have noticed a distinct lag between all these good intentions and what is actually happening on the ground. Changes are intended and many are coming, but they are happening too slowly and, so far, on too modest a scale. I shall give some examples.

Forced marriage is currently a civil offence in Britain. Government proposals will make it a criminal offence and that will go before Parliament in 2013. That is all well and good. In 2002—10 years ago—the Government created the Forced Marriage Unit. In 2008, forced marriage protection orders came into being and a statutory duty was placed on public bodies to protect both children and adults. However, in 2011 the Forced Marriage Unit helpline received 1,400 calls and, in 2012, some 600 by the time this excellent report that we have all had—A Childhood Lost—was compiled. Yet it is estimated that each year around 5,000 women are at risk of being forced into marriage against their will. If that is an annual estimate, then 50,000 women are being threatened. With 1,400 calls but 50,000 women at risk, it is clear that the message is not getting right through. The people who need the help are not being reached.

In the matter of honour-related violence, according to the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, more than 2,800 honour-related cases were reported in the UK in 2010, and police say that that was an increase of 47%. However, in 2011-12, only 172 cases of honour-related violence were prosecuted and, of those, only 50%—some 80—were successful. That number was down from the figure of 52% for successes in the previous year. Therefore, these modest achievements—positive gains in the face of intolerable violence—are no match for the scale of the problem.

This is indeed a global and cultural problem of huge dimensions. It is well established in many cultures that men have the right to exercise control, which often means violence, over their women. That cultural belief is often rooted in the fundamental religion that prevails in the country. I suggest that the religious leaders of the world should perhaps be invited to examine the texts on which these acts of violence are justified. The enlightened leaders of religion know that violence against women is not a moral activity. It would be good if they were to examine the texts, just as the leaders of the anti-slavery trade campaign examined the texts in the Bible that supported slavery. They examined the texts and revised the attitude of their followers.

I have two further suggestions for the Minister. Britain sends trade delegations around the world. The delegations speak up for human rights and plead the case of prisoners wrongfully detained. Could not violence against women be specifically noted in their agendas? Could not a woman be included in delegations, specifically with the idea in mind to meet up with women in other countries and bring the issue into arenas of debate at a high level, with ambassadors, consular officials, and so on, being properly briefed to meet the people who are now speaking out in often very backward countries with little support?

Secondly, the treatment of women fleeing violence who seek asylum in this country is far from satisfactory. The organisation, Women for Asylum Women, has charted many cases where women are summarily turned away by the UK Border Agency and sent back to face the abuse that they were fleeing. The Home Office must instruct the interrogating staff about the nature and scale of violence that such women are fleeing, and allow those women asylum. We are not short of suggestions in this Chamber; we want to see them activated.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bakewell]

6: Clause 8, page 4, line 11, at end insert—
“Such amounts are to include an amount of earnings to be disregarded where a claimant has regular and substantial caring responsibilities.”

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, this amendment seeks to make the lot of carers in our society, whose lives are often already difficult and sometimes miserable, less miserable than it would be if the Bill went ahead as proposed.

There are 6.4 million carers in the UK contributing an estimated £119 billion to the UK for the unpaid care that they provide. I reiterate those figures: 6.4 million carers saving the country £119 billion. What kind of lives do these people have? What kind of situation are they in that they are able to be so generous with their time and their care? They have a rough time. They face a precarious financial situation, with 72 per cent finding themselves worse off when becoming carers due to the combined pressures of reduced earnings, a low level of benefits and the costs associated with living with someone with a disability. A Carers UK survey of over 1,700 carers found that 74 per cent were struggling to pay essential utility bills, 52 per cent were cutting back on their own food to cope, 66 per cent were using their own income earned from very modest jobs to pay for care for the person they were caring for, and 54 per cent were in debt as a result. It is worth saying that people do not choose to be carers; somewhere along the line life has been unkind to them and they are making the very best of it in the interests of us all.

The amendment seeks to help those carers who wish to make their income more secure by taking part in some paid work. It would ensure that when universal credit was calculated, carers would be allowed to keep more of their earnings than those without such responsibilities in recognition of the additional barriers that they face in combining work and care. It is welcome that the Government have decided to keep the carers’ allowance out of the universal credit. That is to the good. It is also welcome that the additional support given to those in short-hours jobs under the universal credit scheme will help to make work pay for some carers. However, it is not clear why the Government do not recognise, with a specific disregard within universal credit, the particular difficulties for carers in holding down a job.

Currently, individuals in receipt of income support are eligible for a £20 a week earnings disregard. That is not a fortune. They are allowed to earn £20 a week before their benefit starts to be withdrawn. The Government have announced that there will be specific disregards for couples, single people, lone parents and disabled people, and they have stated that, taken together with the universal credit taper, these will leave those four groups in low-paying jobs significantly better off than under the current system. However, for some reason this does not apply to single carers, who currently have access to a £20 disregard in income support through the receipt of the carer premium but would be able to access only the basic single person disregard of around £13.50 a week under universal credit. This could leave carers who are juggling work and care over £200 a year worse off because their benefits would be withdrawn earlier.

It does not sound much, does it—£200 a year? What difference could that make? Let me tell your Lordships what difference that would make, and let me repeat that this difference could affect a large number of the 6.4 million carers who are saving the country £119 billion a year in unpaid care. They are the ones who will suffer worse than they already do—carers living on their own, those who do not have children and those who are caring for a disabled parent who is not considered part of their household for the purposes of universal credit. All those groups would be made deliberately worse off than they already are. This group includes those who look after a disabled or elderly friend or poor relative who does not live with them and those who look after, for example, an adult disabled child who lives with them but, because of the rules of universal credit, is not seen as part of their household.

Carers UK estimates that this is likely to affect up to 50,000 carers, leaving them worse off in work and breaking the promise of universal credit to make work pay. These carers did not choose the life that has rolled out before them. They did not make choices about jobs and opportunities. They did not make choices; they were faced with someone they love in a disabled and needful situation. Out of the love they bear them they have made the sacrifice of careers and opportunities to earn as other people earn, in order to give free of their love and to provide care to those in their family. As Carers UK put it, nearly three-quarters of carers on benefits are women. On top of the additional likelihood of childcare responsibilities and difficulties in accessing replacement social care, thereby reducing the financial return of work for women who are able to work for only a few hours alongside caring, this will act to further distance female carers from the workplace.

Carers UK gives the following case study of someone who would be affected by these measures. This is an example. Janet is 55, single and cares for her son Michael, who is 30. Michael is severely autistic, has multiple health conditions and needs constant support. He receives disability living allowance and Janet receives the carer premium to income support for caring for him. Several years ago Michael started going to a specialist day centre for one day a week. Janet has been able to start working for a few hours, earning £20 a week as a cleaner, while Michael is at the day centre. With the income support earnings disregard Janet’s benefits are unaffected by her earnings. However, under universal credit, because she would be eligible only for the basic single person’s earnings disregard, as Michael is not considered to be in the same benefit household as Janet even though they live together, this would mean that after the first £13.50 of earnings, Janet’s earnings would be tapered away at the 65 per cent taper. For £20 of earnings she would be £15.78 better off. Compared to her situation on income support, Janet would be £4.22 a week—£219.44 a year—worse off in work. Is this a situation that people can be proud of—that we should be penalising someone who is giving so much free labour to the country? Janet is unable to increase her working hours because additional day centres are not available and buying replacement specialist domiciliary care costs over £15 an hour, so that would actually leave Janet worse off.

Janet is trapped. She does not have any options—oh, but she does have an option: she could give up doing her caring and put the person for whom she cares into care. She could say, “This is enough. My contribution is not recognised. I am worn out and finding the stress of looking after someone disabled too much. I am going to give up, and someone else can cope. I am going to get a job and make my way of life more comfortable”. What percentage of 6.4 million carers might make such a decision? What would it cost the state if they all abandoned their role as carers? They already do not believe that they get much sympathy from society at large, but moves like this would alienate them still further. The Government should estimate what the cost would be if even a small percentage of 6.4 million carers gave up their role. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I support this amendment, to which my name is also attached. Because of the scheduling of business in your Lordships’ House this is the first opportunity I have had to speak on the Welfare Reform Bill, but I know that many, indeed most, in the carers’ movement owe a huge debt of gratitude to the noble Baronesses and noble Lords who have been speaking throughout Committee stage.

The amendment proposed so ably and passionately by my noble friend seeks to ensure that the universal credit does not put up a further barrier for those people who want to combine caring with work. Given that the aim of the universal credit is to support people into work, it seems wrong to reduce the work incentives for one of the groups for which that support is most needed.

I agree with the Minister’s aim to encourage carers to combine paid work with their caring. Let us think of the reasons why we want to do that. First, it would increase their income; we have already heard that caring takes place in poverty. Secondly, if carers are not in work, they build up poverty for themselves in future through the reduction in their pension contributions. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, being in a paid job helps carers with the stress, which is often very great, of their caring role. It enables them to maintain social contact and skills and to have a bit of respite from the caring situation. So we want to help carers stay in work as long as possible.

We know, however, that carers already face significant barriers to work. According to research commissioned by Carers UK and the DWP for carers’ rights day in 2009, some 1 million carers—that is around one in six of the figure that we have heard of 6 million carers—have given up work or reduced their working hours in order to remain as carers. A major barrier is the availability of suitable replacement care. In a separate survey, over 40 per cent of carers who gave up work did so due to a lack of sufficiently reliable or flexible services. A similar number, 41 per cent, said that they would rather be in paid work but services available do not make a job possible. In addition to that, for those who are able to juggle work and care, stress and poor health are common. Nearly half of the respondents to a survey of working carers for Employers for Carers and Carers UK indicated that their work had been negatively affected by caring and that they felt tired, stressed and anxious. Employees with heavy caring responsibilities are two to three times more likely than those without caring responsibilities to be in poor health. For these reasons, carers are just the sort of claimants to be working a few hours a week in low-paid work. We estimate that 50,000 of them might be affected by this change.

I know that the Minister wants to encourage carers to start working more than a few hours, but because of the other issues I have mentioned, for many carers a small or even a tiny increase in working hours is impossible. Because the Government argue elsewhere in the Bill that increasing earnings disregards will incentivise work, it seems inconsistent here to suggest that reducing the carers disregard will encourage additional work. I hope the Minister will agree that there is no logic to discouraging carers from juggling paid work with caring as long as they can and leaving them worse off than they are. I very much support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

This is not directly a money matter; it is about the structure and the simplicity of the system. When you are changing from an inchoate system, which is what we have now, there are patches where people are a little less well off than they would have been, and that is why we have transitional protection. As you move to a simple, clean structure, there are problems in doing that, and that is what we are trying to address. By definition, it is not possible to overhaul and simplify a system and keep all the existing rules. Existing claimants will not lose because of the transitional protection, so those who have built their lives around a four-hour week will not lose by this, although within the structure there will be a drive to encourage people to do a little more.

I hope that noble Lords understand what we are trying to do here. I know that there is general support for universal credit, but we must maintain something that is tangibly more simple. With that explanation of why the Government cannot support this amendment, I would urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it.

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I have only one or two points to make. The noble Lord challenged the figure of 50,000. It came from Carers UK, which is perhaps our most authoritative body when it comes to delivering data like this. I acknowledge completely that the system needs simplifying and that we want simplicity in the system, but you can have simplicity at different levels. You can have simplicity operating at the rock bottom of the ladder of pay or at a more generous level of pay. One relevant issue about this four-hour working borderline with this tiny slither of people—it is quite a large slither—is that we are an aging population. More and more carers are themselves old. A lot of people in their 60s care for people in their 80s. People in their 60s looking after someone disabled are quite likely to be eligible for something like four hours work a week. That may be all that they can manage themselves. Often you have those who are already ailing or slightly disabled looking after 90 year-old relations. This issue about hours and the flexibility really calls on the Government to examine and deal with that little niche. To that extent, I am disappointed but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.

Pensions Bill [HL]

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, make a persuasive case, but I would refer to it as a persuasive case in an ideal world. First, no alternative way of saving the present value sum of £10 billion has been offered. Secondly, the real priority is to move to a much better state pension at 70—as many noble Lords have commented, entailing an acceleration in the increase of the retirement age. I was interested, turning on the radio in my car the other day, to hear various people in their mid-50s being interviewed who all said that they expected to work until 70 as a matter of course. Perhaps people are somewhat ahead of the two legislatures.

I cannot deny that there is an apparent unfairness here but, without giving offence, I hope, I point out that my wife was one of the lucky ones in getting a state pension at 60—she was just on the cusp, whereas a lot of her friends had to wait a lot longer—but I do not get one until 65 although I am likely to live two and half years less than her. Historically there has been enormous unfairness in the provision of state pensions regarding men and women. Men, who lived shorter, had to wait longer for their pensions. That is going to be ended as pensions are brought into line and made the same for both sexes, but I do not think that I ever heard people complaining on behalf of men that they were getting an unfair deal in relation to women.

One has to accept the idealistic fairness of the case, but £10 billion has to be raised and the priority for all of us is to move towards a much better pension for all at 70. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, pointed out, for the many women who will continue to work, whether to 65, 70 or 75, this will not have a huge effect; it will have a bigger effect on those women not in a position to do so. It is potentially better to deal with that problem by means of the welfare reforms that are going through than to delay the bringing together—or, in fact, the acceleration—of the retirement ages for men and women.

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I support the idea that these changes to the pension age are going too fast. There was a successful film recently called “Made in Dagenham”, which helped to bring home to a new generation of women how much the gender equality gap had changed. It pointed up the distance that women have come today from what they called the bad old days of discrimination. Look at us today, the film said; we enjoy much greater equality, and now we have the law on our side to back us up. Barbara Castle featured in the film, brilliantly played, and she was feisty in her defence of equality for women. The film assumed that the audience who saw it would feel that the story was complete and that equality was an accepted part of our society.

Therefore, it is sad to see a necessary piece of legislation going through that harps on the idea that women will just have to put up with this new piece of discrimination. Half the population of this country are highly tuned to notice what happens to women and the disadvantages that are placed on their lives. Women have more complicated lives than men, as we know; they take time out to have children, to nurse older people and to create stable households—an ideal that I know the Government hold precious. Women therefore need consideration in the pattern of their lives that the amendment seeks to improve.

Bringing in this change to the pension age is extremely important; it is evident that we are an ageing population and we will all of us have to work longer. It is the method by which we bring that about that calls for nuance. Nobody is challenging the fact that we are getting older. Nobody is challenging the fact that, as the noble Lord said, men have been disadvantaged. We do not want them to be disadvantaged; we want people to be treated fairly and equally, and we want gender-free legislation.

This legislation is not gender-free. It cannot be said too often. My colleagues on these Benches have said so already. Listen to the numbers: one-third of a million women will see their state pension age rise by 18 months. Thirty-three thousand will see it increase by two years. It is not just those women who are affected by this but their children, families, neighbours and other women. Women are very aware of legislation that goes against them. It is unfair—we can see that it is. Women are being penalised out of the blue because the Government are rushing forward with pension proposals that need slower and fairer introduction.

One of the Government’s flagship aspirations is to get people to show a greater personal responsibility. That is an excellent thing but how can people do that—how can they plan for their old age, which will take a lot of complicated financial arranging as people live far longer—in so short a time? Indeed, as people age and begin to look forward to their retirement, they formulate attitudes towards it that are hard to change. They see it coming towards them; they make allowances for the time it will give them to look after their own, by now very aged, parents. They may feel they deserve to see a reward coming towards them for a life of hardship and trouble. I know people feel this because they write to me, as they do to my fellow Peers. They complain in their letters that it is an outrage.

This is not a matter of discrimination that will go on in the way that the film showed discrimination operating in the 1960s and 1970s and earlier. We know that this is a transition and one that is important. Of course we have to move to a fairer system. We will all work to 70 and things will eventually come right. However, is it legitimate to see them coming right at the expense of a group of poor and disadvantaged women, who somehow have to be sacrificed on the altar of this speedy operation? In this case there is an alternative.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I, too, am concerned about what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, described as disproportionate disadvantage. I am concerned about women, the great carers in our society—the people who care about the members of their family who are perhaps more vulnerable or dependent and need extra support. They are the people who, because they care so much, are willing to give up their time and perhaps work part-time. I belonged for a period to the Standing Commission on Carers. A survey was reported to the standing commission in its first year which found that the vast majority of family carers are indeed women. It found that when women care, they are more likely to work part-time or give up their occupation, and that men who cared did so extremely well but for fewer hours. Caring was much less likely to impact on their employment hours.

This change is being made too quickly and comes too soon. I acknowledge that, on the face of it, women live longer and that it is perhaps anomalous that their current pension age is lower. Yesterday I met the carers’ forum at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was made up of 12 people who represent carers of sons, daughters, partners and elderly parents with different mental health conditions. Some cared for somebody in their family with a learning disability or autism. The majority of them were women. I asked them how this change, and the speed of this change, would affect people in their position. They represent carers of people with mental health conditions, and they made some very important points quite forcibly.

They said that pension equality is fine, but that perhaps it should come into effect when society is more equal—when women start getting equal pay and occupational pensions, and particularly when men begin to share the caring burden more equally. They support the right of carers to work; they recognise the role of work as respite. They wanted me to stress the importance of not underestimating the effect on carers of a rapid change in their pensionable age when they might have made decisions about caring and occupation in anticipation of an earlier pension age. They talked about the need for health and strength to be an effective carer and the insidious nature of caring—the way in which it can lead to so much tiredness and often depression. They said: “Adrenalin keeps us going when we are caring. But sometimes when our caring responsibilities end, that is the moment when we ourselves begin to experience health problems which we have been storing up during those caring years”.

These are people who have saved the country huge amounts of money through giving up their own occupation and their own time to care and support more vulnerable members of their families. I appreciate that, in a good carers strategy, it might well be that welfare reform will attend to carers’ needs. What they would have liked as carers is a flexible pension that took account of individual need rather than assuming the same age was right for everybody. However, I support these amendments. The speed of change is too rapid particularly for this very vulnerable group, who represent a significant number of people if it is true that as many as a sixth of this particular age group are at the moment affected or carers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, suggested.