State Pension Age for Women Debate
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Tim Loughton
Main Page: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)Department Debates - View all Tim Loughton's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
State Pension Age for Women
Tim Loughton Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Here we are again: it is déjà vu all over again. I am delighted to see so many people supporting this debate, as they did for so many of the debates we had in the previous Parliament. I welcome back some of the longstanding supporters of the campaign, and I particularly welcome new conscripts to the campaign and longstanding Members newly converted to the campaign—partly, I am sure, by the fantastic campaigning efforts of the various WASPI campaigners during the general election, who got people to sign the pledge. I pay tribute to them again.
It is essential that we all keep united on this important campaign. I speak as a co-chair of the all-party group on state pension inequality for women. I and the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who co-chairs it with me, pledge that we will be re-forming the group shortly, to ensure that the WASPI women’s voices are heard loud and clear in this place until we get justice for them.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the state pension system is founded on a contributory principle. It is not a state benefit, for which no prior commitment is involved. Yet that group of women, who have been paying national insurance contributions over many years in good faith and have fulfilled their end of the deal, face being short-changed retrospectively. That is the nub of this injustice.
There is an unfair, disproportionate burden on women born in the 1950s. We have heard so much about the poor communication—they were not made aware of what they were going to face—and the promise of transitional arrangements that have still not materialised, despite various Ministers saying they would. In my view, that represents a breach of trust for those hundreds of thousands—indeed, millions—of women who worked hard, did the right thing and did their bit all their life. The problem is more widespread than we were ever led to believe. It threatens real hardship for many of our constituents now—not at some stage in the future, but absolutely now.
This problem is not going to go away. I hope that, with a new Minister and a new Secretary of State, we can have a new start and a clean break, and that we can recognise this injustice and do something about it at long last.