Mhairi Black
Main Page: Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire South)Department Debates - View all Mhairi Black's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House, while welcoming the equalisation of the state pension age, is concerned that the acceleration of that equalisation directly discriminates against women born on or after 6 April 1951, leaving women with only a few years to make alternative arrangements, adversely affecting their retirement plans and causing undue hardship; regrets that the Government has failed to address a lifetime of low pay and inequality faced by many women; and calls on the Government to immediately introduce transitional arrangements for those women negatively affected by that equalisation.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the time to debate this important issue. I especially want to take a moment to thank the WASPI team— Women Against State Pension Inequality. Pensions are incredibly complicated, as most people would imagine, but these ordinary women have taken the time to sift through all the information and have drafted one of the most comprehensive and articulate briefings that I have seen since being elected. I thank them for articulating their arguments so well.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making a very important statement, given that the former Pensions Minister has admitted that he made a bad decision, based on inadequate briefing. Is it not therefore only right that the House considers this decision today, takes it seriously and reaches the right decision, with the right information before it?
Mhairi Black
That is why the debate is so important, and we should call on the Government to act. However, because pensions are so complicated, it is important, not just for the benefit of some Members, or people in the Gallery, or those watching at home, to try to explain why those women have found themselves in the position that they are in.
To do that, we must go back to 1995, when the Pensions Act increased the female state pension age from 60 to 65. The purpose of that was to equalise the pension age so that women retired at the same age as men. That is fair enough; it makes sense and I do not think anybody would disagree with that principle. The Turner commission recommended that 15 years’ notice be given to individuals if their pension arrangements were to change to give them adequate time to respond appropriately. The 1995 Act technically did that. The equalisation—the changes—was not to be brought in until 2010, which technically gave women 15 years’ notice. The problem is that nobody knew about that. As late as 2008, fewer than half of women knew that they would be affected. The National Centre for Social Research stated in 2011 that only 43% of women were aware of the planned change.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The hon. Lady makes an important point about people not being aware. It would seem that Government Front Benchers are not aware: there is no Equalities Minister here and there is no Department for Work and Pensions Minister here. That is greatly concerning.
Mhairi Black
It is noticeable, and a pity, how few Conservatives have turned out.
It is important to highlight that the Government did not send out a single letter to women. There was no official correspondence between the Government and the individuals affected, alerting them to the changes that were going to happen to them. Even the previous Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, recognised that not everybody knew that the changes had happened in the 1995 Act.
A response to a freedom of information request states that the Department eventually wrote to individuals affected and that
“Mail campaigns took place between 2009 and 2013.”
That is 14 years after the 1995 Act. Women were not personally notified by anybody official until 14 years after the changes came in. That is 14 fewer years that women have had to prepare and to try to make alternative arrangements.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making an important point. In a nutshell, is not the injustice to that set of women the fact that they have had not one but two changes to the state pension age, that the process has been accelerated and that there are no transitional arrangements in place? Is not that the real unfairness?
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Lady is saying. I am glad that she agrees that the need for equalisation is generally accepted and that it is right and proper. Does she think that it might be sensible to urge the Government to look at the sort of 10 to 15-year transitional arrangements that were made in public sector pensions reform? Would that be a constructive way forward?
Mhairi Black
As I said, I do not think that anybody here has a problem with the principle of transitioning towards equality. However, we are talking about women’s pensions, and it is important to bring the discussion back to that.
Many constituents who have written to me said that the information in the letters that they did receive was conflicting. They were getting different information. In one case, a constituent was told that they had enough contributions to receive their full state pension at 60, which was a few months away, only to receive a further letter three weeks later telling her that she will not get her pension until she is nearly 66. Many of the letters did not even get to the people they were supposed to reach. Some people were told by MPs and Ministers that they must have given the DWP the wrong addresses, but those women had been living in the same house for more than 20 years, so I find that difficult to believe.
Mhairi Black
I want to make some progress.
Some people say, “You should not have to be written to. It’s your pension, you should be keeping an eye on it. You should be looking out for reports and things, and take responsibility.” But when giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, financial journalist Paul Lewis told us that after researching this himself he could barely find any reporting of the issue at all in 1995. There were a few small press cuttings from the business pages at the back of some newspapers. A freedom of information request revealed that the Government did fund “broader” awareness campaigns, which ran in waves between 2001 and 2004, but that these campaigns
“did not focus on equalisation in particular”.
In fact, only one of the press adverts in those campaigns was focused on this issue—one press cutting roughly seven years after this had already been passed into law. It is quite evident that this whole thing became a total mess. I do not know whether it was not reported deliberately, for political reasons or fear of ramifications, or whether it was a genuine accident, but what I do know is that women were not notified. It was not reported and they were not given enough time to be able to make appropriate arrangements.
This brings us on to the Pensions Act 2007, which increased the equalised state pension age from 65 to 66 between 2024 and 2026. It gave all affected people 17 years’ notice. That is fair enough, but then we come on to what the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned, the Pensions Act 2011. That came along and said, “Forget the 17 years’ notice, we’re going to rush this through. We need to do this right now.” The 2011 Act accelerated pension age equalisation for women and the subsequent increase to 66, effective from October 2016 onwards, meaning that affected women had only five years’ notice to try to remedy life plans that had been in place for years.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I welcome the debate she has brought to the House. Does she agree that many of these women have had a lifetime of low and unequal pay in low-paid jobs? They have had broken careers, because they have brought up children. Some may have got divorced or separated. Their whole life plan has been disrupted, destroyed and impoverished by this awful change.
Mhairi Black
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman and I will touch on that point later.
The 2011 Act made women wait an extra year to a year and a half to claim their state pension. However, we have to remember and take into account the context which is women did not know about the initial 1995 Act. We have a situation where there is a whole host of women who read about the 2011 Act and went, “Oh, God. Okay, I am going to have to be working an extra two years. I’d better start making plans. Oh no, wait a minute, I’m working till I’m 66. Where did that come from?” There is a whole host of women who have been given a double whammy. The Government have not and are not giving women enough time to prepare alternative plans. There have to be better transitional arrangements.
The Conservative ethos is to encourage independence and responsible choice, but how can that happen if we do not give people the time to make the responsible choices? By continuing this policy at such a high speed, the Government are knowingly and deliberately placing another burden on women who are already trying to deal with consequences of an Act passed 21 years ago that they have only now found out about. To put that into context, I am 21—that’s how old this is.
One of my constituents told me that she began working at 17 and chose to pay the full rate of national insurance on the basis that she would retire at 60. Other options were available to her, but she said, “I want to retire at 60 so I’ll pay the price, through national insurance, my whole working life.” She put it in a way that I think is a very good and accurate description of what is happening. She has now found out that she is not retiring until she is 66. She says:
“The coalition and this present Government have stripped us of our pensions with no prior warning and with no regard to the contract we all entered when we were 17.”
She uses the term “contract”. That is an important point, because pensions are not benefits; they are a contract. People enter into them on the basis that if they pay X amount of national insurance they will receive Y at a certain age.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
That is also the case for my constituent who at 57-and-a-half realised she would no longer be able to retire at 60. She is a care worker doing an extremely physically demanding job. She now has to work until she is 66. She has had a low income throughout her life working as a care worker and now has to carry on doing this demanding job for a further six years.
Mhairi Black
I could not agree more. Every Member, if they contact their constituents, will recognise that this problem spreads across the whole of the UK and affects women of all classes, from different backgrounds and with different jobs.
In criminal law, if we want to send someone to jail, it has to be agreed beforehand how long that person is going away for, and if that needs to change, there are appropriate measures to deal with it. In civil law, if we enter into a contract, there are terms and conditions stating, “If you want to change this contract or break out of it, there will be a price to pay.” Why are pensions any different? This is a contract people have entered into, but it is now being broken and nothing is being done to allow them to transition. These women have done exactly what was asked of them—they have worked hard all their lives and paid their national insurance—but it is now being taken from them behind their backs.
What is worse, if the Government choose to continue with the policy, they will be completely ignoring the years of gender inequality these women have lived through. Another constituent of mine, Kathleen Birney, explains that she worked until her children came along. Her husband could no longer work because of a disability, but she was determined not to depend on state benefits, so she studied and became a primary school teacher. She cared for her husband and her children, and she never claimed a penny. She has based all her life plans and financial plans on the basis that she would be retiring at 60. She has now found out that she cannot retire until she is 66. Unpaid carers are the unsung heroes of our economy. They have saved consecutive Governments an absolute fortune time and again. Sadly, women in our society have had to live with years of performing gender roles, meaning that the vast majority of unpaid carers are women. They are the type of people this policy is hitting: people who cannot afford to go another six years without a pension. Some women, such as Kathleen, are being left penniless. They have nothing and are being forced to turn to the state for benefits. How does that fit into the logic of reducing public spending?
We will most likely hear the Government say, “It’s all okay because women will do better under the new single-tier state pension”, but there is a campaign called CARIISP—the collection against real inequality and injustice of the state pension—which is a collection of women rightly pointing out that a person only receives the higher rate of the new pension if they have paid 35 years of national insurance, but many women have not had the chance to build up that level of contribution. It is a separate issue; I mention it, first, to raise awareness and, secondly, in the hope it will earn a debate on its own merits.
The Government have said:
“The policy decision to increase women’s state pension age is designed to remove the inequality between men and women.”
That is a strange definition of equality: I am being shafted and short-changed purely because of when I was born and because I am a woman. That is not my definition of equality.
To conclude, there are two problems at the heart of this. First, there is the poor communication over the years, but all we can do is learn from that. I accept that the 1995 Act has happened, and all we can do is reflect on the mistakes made and not repeat them. The second issue, however, is the 2011 Act and the rapid changes the coalition and this Government have made. We can do something about that. Unlike most things that come from this Government—I mean this sincerely—I do not believe that this policy was vindictive or done in the knowledge that it would hurt people. I genuinely think we have ended up in this mess purely because of mistake after mistake, but any mess can be cleared up. If they continue with this policy, however, in the full knowledge of everything that has been and will be outlined, it will become vindictive and deliberate, and it will be done in the full knowledge that people will be hurt.
I understand that we have to work in tandem and with responsibility when it comes to the economy, but that does not mean punishing people who are about to retire. Every topic we speak about in this Chamber comes down to: “Where are you gonna find the money?” I understand that, but the answer is always austerity, no matter how brutal or who it affects. In this Chamber since I was elected we have had a go at people on low wages, the disabled and women, and now we are having a go at pensioners. We can afford to send airstrikes to Syria and to pay for nuclear weapons, but we cannot afford to look after our pensioners? I just do not buy it. The women up in the Gallery right now did not cause the financial crash, they are not responsible for the state of our economy and they did not make the irresponsible decisions that got us here. I understand the question, “Where are you gonna find the money?”, but I refuse to accept or believe that it has to come out of the pensions of older women.
Several hon. Members rose—
Huw Merriman
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I know she has led a campaign in her constituency to that end. Ideally, we will hear such a statement from the Minister. I believe pension changes require 10 years’ notification and that 15 years’ notice was given for the 1995 changes, but, as she mentioned, the notice period for the 2011 changes was eight years, and even down to five years. As I was not in this place at that time, I am certainly very keen to find out more from the Minister.
Where I have issues with the motion is that although I agree very much with the concern raised, I do not ultimately see a remedy. I stood on a manifesto commitment that pledged us to deliver a budget surplus by 2020, which means that compensation for this matter would have to be paid for by another group of my constituents.
I have real concerns about another age group in my constituency—those in their 20s and 30s. They are sometimes referred to as the packhorse generation because they are saddled with debts from university, which I and many others of my age group and those older than me did not have to endure. They are not in receipt of occupational pension schemes. They are paying high rents and struggling to afford a home of their own, and they are likely to be the subject of pension changes in decades to come if life expectancy continues to increase.
Huw Merriman
No. With respect to the hon. Lady, I will make some progress, if I may.
I am keen for the Government to assess what more can be done to help the women impacted by the pension changes, but I am conscious that, before my election to this place, they conducted a review and allocated more than £l billion to mitigate the impact on the worst affected. Further mitigation, if introduced, would then reveal the next age group to be impacted, and we would never be able to move on. If my Government’s manifesto is to be enacted, such further mitigation will have to be paid for by others in the form of increased taxes.
The issue of pensions is becoming increasingly vexed. It is undoubtedly the case that post-retirement life expectancy is now much greater than was envisaged when pensions calculators were put in place. Additionally, with the advances made to allow those in their 60s to remain fit and active, many people in their 60s and beyond are working in a manner that was not envisaged when those pensions calculators were put in place. This is a general change in life and working age expectancy—we all rightly celebrate it, because it shows that people are living longer and leading fitter lives in their advanced years—but it means that there is a funding gap. To avoid placing a financial obligation on those in their 20s and 30s, who are currently struggling to get on, that gap has required the country to revise the pension age to take into account the changes in life and work expectancy.
Huw Merriman
I will take one last intervention as this is the hon. Lady’s debate.
Mhairi Black
Does the hon. Gentleman not see that by forcing such women to continue to work until they are 66, he is contradicting himself? One of the reasons why people my age cannot get work is that it is being done by those trying to secure some income until they reach the pension age.
Huw Merriman
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, but I do not agree with her. The reality is that if the change had not been implemented, £30 billion would have had to be found from elsewhere. I think there is an additional £8 billion in tax revenue to be found as well. Where would that money come from if not from the generation that she knows well?
Huw Merriman
I will continue to make progress. To me, it is a complete contradiction to say, on the one hand, that something needs to be done, but, on the other, that it will not have an impact on any other taxpayers over the generations.
Finally, I have the greatest sympathy for those caught by the changes who have had to revise their plans accordingly. This, however, is a settled matter, and I worry about what the impact will be on others if changes are now made.
Mr Vara
If the hon. Gentleman had taken the trouble to listen while he was preparing his question, he would know that that is what I said, except that I used different words. He might want to check the Hansard record tomorrow morning. In this place, it always helps to listen before speaking.
The Government listened to the concerns expressed during the passing of the 2011 Act, and shortened the delay that anyone would experience in claiming their state pension, relative to the 1995 timetable, to 18 months. That concession benefited almost a quarter of a million women, who would otherwise have experienced delays of up to two years. A similar number of men also benefited from a reduced increase. The concession was worth £1.1 billion in total, and as a result 81% of women affected will experience a delay of 12 months or less.
Mhairi Black
To me, the concessions that were given show that the Government recognise that the transition was not appropriate. Given that the wording of today’s motion is clear in asking the Government to reassess the transitional arrangements, will the Minister confirm that he will do so if the motion is passed, be it unanimously or with a vote—yes or no?
Mhairi Black
First, I wish to congratulate the House on having such a good quality debate. What has been striking is that this is an issue that clearly crosses party boundaries and constituencies. The Minister said that it had already been thoroughly debated, but that was in 2011. All the evidence that we have heard today shows that this matter needed to be debated more, which it has been, and we have found that the accommodation reached in 2011 did not go far enough and is not good enough. Despite my intervention in this whole debate, I am no further forward in understanding whether, if this motion is passed, the Government will commit to reassess the transitional arrangements.
The Minister has spoken at great length about equalisation. Nobody here disagrees with the principle of equalisation. What we are concerned about is the transition, and that has not been addressed. My hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) quite rightly pointed out that this matter is about priority; everything that a Government decide to do is about priority. I am still not clear what the priorities of this Government are, and for that reason I wish to press this matter to a vote.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I put the question, may I remind the House that Members who shout, “Aye” cannot then vote no, and Members who shout “No” cannot then vote aye. I hope that is clear.
Question put.