Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson, during my first appearance on the Front Bench in this Chamber. I debated with the Minister in Committee last week, and I welcome him back to what is no doubt the first of many exchanges here. I reassure anyone tuning in late that the broken elbow and rib that I am sporting predate this debate, and that our discussions, although heated, have been civil, although I did fear at one point for the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham).

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for opening this debate with a fantastic speech, and the Petitions Committee for ensuring that we could have it. Above all, I congratulate the women of the WASPI campaign, and all those who signed the petition, on their work to get us here. Their numbers are impressive, but we have revealed that the numbers affected by the issue are even greater, at more than 2.5 million nationally. Around 3,500 of those are in my constituency and, like many here, I have heard their concerns directly.

Hon. Members have made some excellent points and we can tell the level of concern from the number of contributions from both sides of the Chamber. In particular, I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) for their tireless campaigning, and all hon. Members who have contributed today. There are too many to mention in the time I have, but I will write to them all independently.

People listening to contributions made outside this Chamber may have heard the Minister for Pensions say this morning that the WASPI campaign wants to return the state pension age to 60. Let me put it on the record, as others have done, that that is not the case and it has never been advocated in my hearing. Opposition Members are not arguing for that or against equalisation of the state pension age. I hope that, instead of following such red herrings, the Government will listen to the women who are affected, and act. That is what we want to hear from them today.

Opposition Members have shared concerns about the impact of the acceleration under the Pensions Act 2011, the adequacy of the transitional protections and the communication of the changes to retirement ages generally. At one point, those concerns were shared by the Minister herself. She described the last Tory Government’s 2011 Act as a decision

“to renege on its Coalition Agreement, by increasing the State Pension Age for women from 2016, even though it assured these women that it would not start raising the pension age again before 2020.”

That is still live on her website www.rosaltmann.com. After the passage of the Act including the concession that the Minister will no doubt repeat shortly, she said that the Government

“seems oblivious to the problems faced by those already in their late fifties, particularly women”.

Will the real Ros Altmann please stand up? Apparently, she now prefers to stand up for the Government than for those women. That is a pity because the issues at stake are real and the Government give every impression of simply refusing to engage with them. Instead, we have heard repeatedly—most recently a few hours ago at Question Time—that the 18-month cap is their start and end point.

Let me set out my start point. We must take into account that many of the women who are affected by the changes have also been victims of gender inequality for most of their working lives.

[Gavin Robinson]

Will the hon, Lady give way?

[Angela Rayner]

I will not give way because I do not have much time.

The Equal Pay Act was not introduced until 1970 so many of these women began working even before the first legislative steps to ensure gender equality at work. Before I was elected to this place, I was in a traditionally low-paid, largely female workforce in social care. As an active trade unionist I fought for many years to improve pay and conditions, but even now we are a long way from achieving decent, let alone equal, wages in much of that sector.

Some of the women we are discussing today will have entered work before the 1968 strike in Dagenham. They will have been paid less than men simply because they were women. Those who are likely to have entered work earliest—those born between 6 April 1951 and 5 April 1953 —will not be eligible for the new single tier pension.

Another cohort, those born later in 1953, will have found their retirement age change twice: in 1995 and 2011—

[Mr David Hanson (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House. We will reconvene in 15 minutes. If there is more than one Division, which is possible, we will reconvene 10 minutes after each subsequent Division.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Angela Rayner]

Before we left, I was saying how women have been discriminated against, and continue to be discriminated against, year on year and decade upon decade.

Transitional protections were discussed and promised during the passage of the 2011 Act. We now know that the Minister’s predecessor in the coalition Government, Steve Webb, had hoped for around a tenth of the direct savings—£3 billion—to be put aside for these protections. The option that was eventually put forward as a concession —the 18-month cap—cost around a third of that amount. So we have a missing £2 billion, which has gone to the Treasury, along with the rest of the savings made from these women.

Of course, it bears repeating that the former Minister has since admitted that that decision was a bad one, made as a consequence of his not being properly briefed. It would be interesting to know whether today’s Ministers have been better briefed and whether they will make a better decision.

The Minister has often put this question back on the Opposition but consistently refused to say whether the Department has properly investigated and modelled options for additional transitional protections. For example, as my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), stated earlier, during the passage of the 2011 Act we put forward the option to maintain the qualifying age for pension credit on the 1995 timetable rather than on the 2011 one. I hope the Minister will respond to the suggestions made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North and many other Members.

This debate is not the first time that I have asked what consideration the Government have made of these and other options. As the Minister will know, I have asked him in Committee, through written questions and, today, through oral questions. Despite the Government’s boast that they would be the most open and transparent Government in the world, so far we are none the wiser as to what options they have considered, let alone what the outcomes of those investigations were.

I ask the Minister again: what modelling and analysis has the Department carried out since 2011 on the potential transitional protections? Will he publish that work in full, so that we can assess it for ourselves? Will the Government then consider alternatives properly and in full, and come back with a proper response to those who have signed the petition that we are considering today and the many millions more who are similarly affected. In our view, that is the very least that they deserve.