Hansard - United Kingdom Parliament

55 Pensions Bill [Lords]
20 JUNE 2011
Pensions Bill [Lords]
56
[Mr Byrne]
and in itself could mean 500,000 fewer people enrolling
automatically in a pension scheme. The loss to them
could be £150 million in employer pension contributions.
Put those two things together and the average man or
woman could lose nearly three years of pension saving—a
7% reduction in an individual’s fund. I am afraid that
we simply cannot support that measure.
That takes me to the most audacious broken promise
of the lot—the proposal to single out a group of 500,000
of our fellow citizens, all of them women, and say to
them, “You know your plans for the future? Well, you
can put them in the bin.” The Secretary of State might
think it a relatively small and trivial number, but the
Opposition do not.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman
give way?
Mr Byrne: I will in a moment.
This unfolding chaos has been impressive even for a
Government who have presided over U-turns on forests,
sentencing reform and the reorganisation of the NHS,
because we thought we knew where we were. The coalition
Government made a wise move in appointing the Pensions
Minister to his brief—he is a man who knows a thing or
two about pensions. Indeed, in one of his first major
speeches, he told his audience:
“I have become known as something of a bore at pensions
conferences.”
We have no problem with that. Then we had the coalition
agreement. I do not know whether anyone remembers
the coalition agreement—it was important once. Page 26
reads:
“We will phase out the default retirement age and hold a
review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise
to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020
for women.”
For good measure, the Pensions Minister got to his feet
a month or so later and said that the Government were
committed to any change not being sooner than 2020
for women. Then, 118 days later, the Chancellor arrives
on the scene. He stands at the Dispatch Box and says
that
“the state pension age for men and women will reach 66 by
2020.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 956.]
Yet buried in the fine print, we learnt the truth—not
the Pensions Minister, the Secretary of State or the
Chancellor could bring themselves to that Dispatch
Box and actually tell people straight that that policy set
out in the coalition agreement was absolutely worthless.
The truth was set out in the depths of the spending
review, page 69 of which read:
“The State Pension Age will then increase to 66 for both men
and women from December 2018 to April 2020.”
That is a promise well and truly broken. At least when
the Lib Dems changed their minds about increasing
tuition fees, they could pretend that they were just
making things up to get elected, but this was a promise
they made and broke in government. Just last summer,
the Pensions Minister boasted of reforms in the system
that he said included
“those who the system has always missed out such as women and
the lower paid.”
In his own Department’s review, he said that he wanted
to look at the “particular challenge” for
“women pensioners. A group I have long worked for, and who are
so often the poor relations in regard to pensions.”
I will let the House draw its own conclusions. One
moment the Pensions Minister is offering to protect
women pensioners, the next he is presenting proposals
that will punish half a million women with a bill for up
to £16,000.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con) rose—
Mr Byrne: I will give way, and perhaps the hon.
Gentleman can explain the Pension Minister’s change
of face.
Richard Fuller: The right hon. Gentleman was giving
a discourse on integrity in pensions provision under the
previous Government, which I think is important, because
many of my constituents will be worried about this
issue, and will be looking for integrity. He is very good
with numbers—it is when he has to add them up that he
has trouble—so I am wondering, on the point of integrity,
could he answer this question? The Labour party has
recommendations for how best to treat the women he is
highlighting who are being impacted by the Bill, and
those recommendations are costed at £10 billion. In the
interest of integrity, will he please advise me and other
Members where he would find the money?
Mr Byrne: Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that he
has seen the costings given in the parliamentary answer
provided by the Pensions Minister on 9 March 2011?
Richard Fuller: I have not seen those costings, so the
right hon. Gentleman can enlighten me further.
Mr Byrne: The Minister gave an interesting answer,
because those costings say that if, for example, we
increased the retirement age to 67 by 2035—that is, if
we accelerated the reform by one year—that would save
£6.9 billion. However, if the retirement age was increased
to 67 by 2034, by accelerating the increase by two years,
that would save £13.7 billion. Therefore, the question
for us this afternoon is: how much will be saved by
accelerating the reform for those women who are now
having to retire later, and who therefore confront trying
to find all that money magically, in the space of just
four or five years? Has that been traded off against
other options, such as introducing advances in the
retirement age later on? That is the question that we
have to get to the bottom of in this Second Reading
debate.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) rose—
Ben Gummer rose—
Richard Fuller rose—
Mr Byrne: I will give way in a moment.
Let us hear what the impact of the Government’s
proposals will be, because the Secretary of State rather
glided over this point. Some half a million women will
receive their state pension at least 12 months later than
they had previously been advised, with 300,000 women—
those born between December 1953 and October 1954—
experiencing a delay of one and a half years. For 33,000
women—those born between 6 March and 5 April
1954—that period increases to two years. For them,