Christine Jardine
Main Page: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)Department Debates - View all Christine Jardine's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
State Pension Age
Christine Jardine Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.
I am sure that many of the Members present have had the same experience as I have in representing their constituents: that woman after woman born in the 1950s has come and told them stories about having planned for their pension since they were young and having put money aside. In one case, someone took redundancy from a well-paid white-collar job because she would get her pension in two years, only to discover that that was not the case. In the intervening years, the savings that she had built up for her pension and the redundancy money that would have seen her through those two years had been spent. That constituent is now out working two jobs in order to make ends meet.
Regardless of what the Government might think, there is no class divide, no voter divide and no geographical divide in this. The mismanagement of the introduction of the new pension ages has trapped women all over Scotland and the United Kingdom in a poverty trap. They are being pushed into hardship by mismanagement. As my colleagues have said, we come here time after time, we make the same case, which is completely justifiable, and we hear nothing back from the Government.
An all-party parliamentary group Bill will come before the House in April next year. I hope that on that occasion, Members on both sides of the House will remember that this is not a political issue: it is about justice. It is about justice for women who were unfortunate enough to be born in the 1950s, who suffered the mismanagement of the introduction of a change in the pension age, and are now in circumstances over which they had no control. We do have control; we can change it, and I hope that every Member in the House will remember that when it comes time to vote.