Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

At the last Budget, the Chancellor happened to find £27 billion extra in tax revenues, which was a very handy little windfall to find down the back of the sofa, but the WASPI women will have heard that he did not spend a red cent of it—not a penny—on them, as he could have done. If he continues to play the WASPI women for fools and continues to take our pensioners for granted, then, as Baroness Altmann has told him already, he will live to regret it.

That is a sentiment that we can share right across the House. It is why not a single Conservative Member chose to vote against either of the previous calls for transitional arrangements in any of the debates we have held. It is why so many Conservative Back Benchers have pledged their support to the WASPI campaign. It is why this issue will not go away without action from the Government.

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Owen Smith]

I give way to the doughty campaigner from Eccles.

[Barbara Keeley]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way at this point because I want to make sure that we are not given the same excuses by the Minister, when he speaks in a moment, that he has previously given. We heard:

“Equalisation was necessary to meet the UK’s obligations under EU law”.—[Official Report, 2 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 145WH.]

Conservative Members have been writing that out, but it is not true. I have raised this in a number of debates. The interesting thing in relation to changing previous legislation is that Poland is now introducing legislation to reverse its previous reforms. Its Government clearly realised that they had got it wrong, just as this Government have got it wrong.

[Owen Smith]

Poland has realised that it had moved too fast. France has done the same, as has Germany. Countries across Europe, Governments across Europe—including right-wing Governments in parts of Europe—have acknowledged that they made a mistake and are backtracking. Only this Government refuse to acknowledge any mistake, and refuse to acknowledge that they have any culpability or responsibility.

This issue will not go away, and when the Minister stands at the Dispatch Box in a moment, he should offer a glint of sunlight and some hope for the WASPI women that the Government have heard their campaign and will do something about it. If the Government do not, I will urge all Back-Bench Members to do so on their behalf.

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

I am pleased to speak in this debate because I have heard in so many cases how the changes brought in by the Pensions Act 2011 affect the lives of millions of women born throughout the 1950s. They are unfairly bearing the burden of the personal costs of the Government’s increases to the state pension age, because many find themselves without a job, without a pension or pensioner benefits, and without money to live on, and that must focus our minds. Many of the 1950s-born women affected by the changes are living in real financial hardship.

In our last debate on this, I asked the Minister where the work or suitable support is for women affected by the state pension age increases that his Government have brought in. There are 2.6 million women born in the 1950s affected by the Government’s changes, but finding suitable employment in our 60s is not the same as looking for work in our teens and 20s. The experience of my constituents is that suitable work or support programmes do not exist. These facts were known about in 2011 when the legislation went through.

The Minister was pilloried even by MPs of his own party when he read out a list of benefits available to 1950s-born women affected by the Government’s changes. I say to the Minister that he does not realise what it means to have to go to a jobcentre or to be pushed on to the Work programme or to have an assessment for ESA. My constituents have told me how they feel about having to go to jobcentres; they feel there is no dignity in having to do that as women in their 60s, after a lifetime of working, bringing up children, and paying national insurance contributions for 40 years or more. One of my constituents told me she was pleased they had taken her off ESA

“because it is making me ill to keep dealing with them...the way you are dealt with.”

I have a constituent who is forced to attend the Work programme. She feels that it fails to take into account her previous experience, which is a very common feeling. She is worried about being “parked” on a programme where she has to work for free or face sanctions.

WASPI campaign supporters have shared other stories about poor practice by Work programme providers when working with 1950s-born women. One 62-year-old woman with a full work history has reported being escorted by staff of the provider Seetec around a shopping centre with a CV to make speculative applications to managers in shops there, but the woman involved did not recognise her CV because it had been changed by the Work programme provider to disguise her age by removing her date of birth and full work history. That raises legal issues as such misrepresentation can make an employment contract void, but putting them aside we see that the Government’s acceleration of state pension age changes is pushing some women who become unemployed into such situations.

Women affected have described the whole process as “degrading”, being “frogmarched” with a falsified CV around a shopping centre and constantly under observation. It was also humiliating for women on this programme when the same provider offered inappropriate incentives such as sweets or chocolates to “encourage” the women to apply for jobs. Women fear they will be subject to sanctions if they refuse to participate.

We should be ashamed to have a system that treats women born in the 1950s in this way when they have worked all their lives. I have asked before why the Government have not considered different schemes to support people in their 60s. The Government have changed the situation and they should do that. Why have they not looked at a bridge pension scheme, or offering concessionary travel, or winter fuel payments?

Throughout their lives, 1950s-born women have been disadvantaged in terms of pay and pensions. They deserve better after a lifetime of work than being frogmarched around shopping centres or offered sweets to fill in job applications. They deserve proper consideration of a lifetime of work and NI contributions: they deserve fair transitional arrangements.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

I am sorry that the limited time available prevents me from paying credit to all the Members who have spoken today. There has been real passion, and well thought out and measured responses on both sides of the House, drawing on the challenges we face, the concerns raised directly by residents and the work of the WASPI campaign, to which many Members are paying close attention.

I pay credit to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and to the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper), who made the shortest speech today and gave some people some extra time. I understand the challenge that my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) have found themselves in. It is a difficult decision, particularly to go against our own Government. My hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), for Salisbury (John Glen) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham) set out in great detail the wider issues and challenges we face. The key to that was eloquently put by my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).

The Opposition have set out six options, which are very attractive. How simple life would be if we could simply say yes to all six, or any number of those six options. However, the challenge is that not a single one has been costed. Not a single one has suggested what we should not be doing. There is occasionally vague guesswork on what could pay for something. I was in two debates yesterday in Westminster Hall. The same vague ideas were expressed on how things could be paid for.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Justin Tomlinson]

Because of the lack of time, I will not give way.

We have to look at the acceleration of state pension age equalisation, which is being introduced by this Government in order to achieve gender equality in state pension provision and to provide a sustainable system that can work for future generations. Often that is forgotten. It is always about now, not those future generations, our children and our children’s children, to whom all too often politicians have bequeathed yet more debt.

In recent years, because of higher life expectancy and the difference in state pension ages, women on average have been receiving considerably more state pension over their lifetime than men. Not only was equalisation necessary to meet the UK’s obligations under EU law, but it provides the foundations for a fairer state pension that treats men and women equally.