Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the gender pension gap.

We are working across government to better understand the challenge and agree a definition of the gender pensions gap. This will allow us to monitor progress and begin reporting on the issue.

Through Automatic Enrolment and the new State Pension, we are enabling more women to build up pension provision in their own right – reducing historic inequalities in the pensions system.

Under the new State Pension over three million women stand to receive an average of £550 more per year by 2030. State pension outcomes are expected to equalise for men and women by the early 2040s, over a decade earlier than they would have under the old system.

Automatic Enrolment has increased the number of women contributing to a workplace pension. We are taking steps to further increase women’s participation in workplace pensions.

We remain committed to implementing the measures recommended in the 2017 review of Automatic Enrolment in the mid 2020s. These will disproportionately benefit lower earners, including people working in multiple low-paid part time jobs, who are predominantly women. We are supporting Jonathan Gullis MP’s Private Member’s Bill which passed committee stage on Wednesday 15 March, as this presents an immediate route for the legislative powers to expand the Automatic Enrolment framework in the current Parliamentary session.