Pensions Bill [Lords]

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Wicks]

My argument is that it is wrong to treat someone who starts work at 15 or 16 equally to someone who starts their first proper job at 21 or, with post-graduate qualifications, 23, 24 or 25. People who start earlier have often been in the labour market doing tough manual work—tougher work than any of us have ever done—for 10 more years than the likes of us. My argument is that we should reconstitute our national insurance system to recognise the contributions that they have made, so that anyone in work for, say, 49 years and paying contributions throughout that time should at the very least be able to take not an early pension, but a pension at a more reasonable age. If that brings about a difference between when they take their pension and when their grandchildren who went to university take theirs, that would be fair.

If we do not start to understand some of these social, employment and class sensitivities as we helter-skelter towards higher state pension ages, we will make mistakes and, with great unfairness and injustice, and leave people behind. Many of those people will never get their pensions, because they will be dead before they qualify for them. That is not a sign of a decent British pensions system that understands how our society is evolving.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on behalf of the hundreds and possibly thousands of women who have contacted me on this matter. I also speak as a woman who is directly and personally affected by the Government’s changes, so I am in a position to tell the Government what is happening to women of a certain age when it comes to pensions.

The women who have contacted me have told me that they expected changes in the pension age. They know that we are all living longer—or rather, that some of us are—that we need to plan for our retirement better and over a longer period, that we need to pay more for our pensions and that there needs to be some equalisation between when men and women access their pensions. They understand and recognise all that. However, it is the speed at which the changes are being implemented that is causing anxiety and fear among women who no longer have time to plan and save for their future.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I, too, have been contacted by hundreds of concerned women in my constituency. Although we acknowledge the Government’s concessions, which they probably made because of the pressure that those women have put on them, they will not meet everybody’s needs. Hundreds of my constituents will still be up to £11,000 worse off, with not enough time to plan for a reasonable pension in their old age.

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree. This is just one more Government policy, on top of others that directly affect women and young people more than any other group, that will impoverish women. Whatever last-minute fixes the Government come up with, it remains wrong to penalise disproportionately women who happen to be between the ages of 56 and 58, many of whom have worked all their working lives. Many of them will have held several jobs in order to keep their families. They have paid their taxes and their bills, and, quite frankly, they deserve better than this.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the pension is one of the few certainties in life and that it is now being ditched for women of a certain age, as she aptly puts it? Those women have planned meticulously for when their retirement will begin and what they will use their pension for. They have planned how it will be broken down into housekeeping and into meeting the needs of their grandchildren, for example, but that is all being thrown askew by these proposals.

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely. This is causing not just anxiety but fear among those women, many of whom have been barred, until recently, from private company pension schemes because they were having to work in several part-time jobs with very low incomes in order to keep their families. They are now being let down by a Government who are simply not giving them sufficient time, which is all that they are asking for, to plan for the change.

[Dr Whiteford]

Given what we have heard from the right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) about the failure of people’s health to keep up with the increase in longevity, does the hon. Lady agree that many of those women will not be in the best of health and will be having to look for jobs at a time when their health might be compromised and they are not nearly as fit as they used to be?

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree.

The Chancellor has told us that he will not balance the books on the backs of the poor abroad, so why is he prepared to balance the books to a disproportionate degree on the backs of 500,000 women who just happen to have been born between 6 October 1953 and 5 March 1955? Why is it okay to do that to those women? The Government need to listen to the women of this country and accept Labour’s amendment so that no woman will have to wait more than an extra 12 months to reach their state pension age.

[Richard Graham]

I am delighted to be called to speak in the debate. I welcome amendments 13 and 14, which show that the Government have listened to their people, and I congratulate the Secretary of State and the Pensions Minister on successfully providing some relief to women in their 50s in my constituency. I pay tribute to all those from Gloucester who came to see me about this issue, led by Patsy Toleman, and to those who were encouraged by the campaign led by Age UK to write to me about it.

Like others on both sides of the coalition Government, I have been very active in writing to and making the case personally to the Secretary of State and the Chancellor, and I am sorry that the Opposition have been less than generous in their recognition of the value of capping at 18 months the increase in the wait for their pension for 250,000 women. They should perhaps be reminded that Age UK has said that

“we can’t emphasise enough the great achievement that this change represents as it will cost the Government £1 billion in lost cuts to expenditure.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

In a perfect world, everyone would have liked the changes to have gone further, but I believe that capping the additional waiting period at 18 months represents a significant step forward in providing time for preparation. We are not, alas, living in a perfect world—

[Pat Glass]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

I should like to finish answering the previous intervention before I take the next one.

I am sure that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) would agree that tonight is all about a welcome change for all of us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. We have heard several Members on the Government Benches talk about a perfect world, but does he accept that we did not have a perfect world in 1909, when the first pensions legislation was discussed, and that we certainly did not have one in 1945? Other Governments nevertheless saw that it was right not to take this kind of action, despite the very difficult financial circumstances in which they found themselves.

[Richard Graham]

I do not believe that that analogy is relevant. As I pointed out earlier to the right hon. Member for Croydon North, any analogy that stretches to compare today’s announcements with those in the original pensions legislation in 1911 is inaccurate, because it leaves aside the critical factor that life expectancy back then was hugely different from what it is now. In fact, the vast majority of people then did not live long enough to collect their pension, whereas today people will be living for 40, or possibly 50, years beyond their pension age—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) is chuntering away, but the reality is that there are people in the public service who are drawing their pension in their 40s or early 50s, and it is not inconceivable that they will live for another 40 years.