State Pension Reform

Cathy Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

It will indeed. To give a flavour of the scale, at the moment nearly half of all pensioners are entitled to some sort of means-tested benefit. That is an extraordinary and absurd situation. If I tell the hon. Gentleman that by the time the system is fully implemented, we will be down to one in 20 pensioners being entitled to pension credit, that provides an example of the scale of the change we are bringing in.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

In his statement, the Minister made much of the need for plain language, so will he confirm that under the proposals a significant number of women will not receive the new higher-rate single-tier pension in 2017, even though men born on the same date would receive it? Will he also confirm that that potentially affects some 430,000 women across the UK, including 39,000 in Scotland?

[Steve Webb]

I think I have already dealt with that point. Pension ages are changing, and they will not be the same for men and women until 2018. If we have a system based on pension age, it will be different for men and women by definition until they are equalised. It seems to me that the only way to run a system is to base it on people’s actual state pension age—rather than have an actual state pension age and then bring single tier in on a different day for a set of people born in different periods. That would introduce extra complexity, which we are trying to stop.