Pensions Bill [Lords]

Public Bill Committee, 5 July 2011.

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Given the sunny, warm weather Members may remove their jackets during the meeting if they wish. I remind all Members to ensure that mobile phones, pagers and suchlike are turned off or switched to silent mode during Committee sittings. Also, as a general rule, I and my fellow Chair do not intend to call starred amendments—those which have not been tabled with adequate notice. The required notice period in Public Bill Committees is three working days. Therefore amendments should be tabled by the rise of the House on Monday for consideration on Thursday and by the rise of the House on Thursday for consideration on Tuesday. There is a money resolution in connection with the Bill and copies are available in the room.

Not everyone is familiar with the procedure in Public Bill Committees so I will briefly explain how we will proceed. The Committee will first be asked to consider the programme motion, for which debate is limited to half an hour. We will then proceed to a motion to report written evidence. Then we will begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 am on Tuesday 5 July) meet—

(a) at 4.00 pm on Tuesday 5 July;

(b) at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 7 July;

(c) at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm on Tuesday 12 July;

(d) at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm on Thursday 14 July;

(e) at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm on Tuesday 19 July;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clause 1; Schedule 1; Clause 2; Schedule 2; Clause 3; Schedule 3; new Clauses relating to Part 1; new Schedules relating to Part 1; Clauses 4 to 14; new Clauses relating to Part 2; new Schedules relating to Part 2; Clauses 15 to 18; Schedule 4; Clauses 19 to 24; new Clauses relating to Part 3; new Schedules relating to Part 3; Clauses 19 to 24; new Clauses relating to Part 3; new Schedules relating to Part 3; Clause 25; Schedule 5; new Clauses relating to Part 4; new Schedules relating to Part 4; Clauses 26 and 27; remaining new Clauses; remaining new Schedules; Clauses 28 to 30; remaining proceedings on the Bill;

(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 7.00 pm on Tuesday 19 July.

I am sure that we will all enjoy serving under your chairmanship over the coming days and weeks, Mr Brady. There are two main strands to the Bill—a change to the state pension age designed to take account of the changes in longevity, and refinement to the process of auto-enrolment into workplace pensions.

The topic of state pension age has attracted most attention and is clause 1 of the Bill, so it is inevitably our focus this morning. However, we hope that proper attention will also be given to issues of auto-enrolment, which were thoroughly and helpfully debated in another place. The Committee will be aware that we will require new things of judges; that was less contentious at this end of the corridor than the other end of the corridor. I am sure Mr Brady would prefer us to spend most of the time today talking about the Bill and its measures rather than the programme motion, so I commend the motion to the Committee.

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

Copies of the memorandums that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee room.

Clause 1 - Equalisation of and increase in pensionable age for men and women

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I beg to move amendment 16, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘“December 1953”’ and insert ‘“April 1955”’.

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 17, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) In sub-paragraph (4) leave out “6 April 1959” and insert “6 April 1955”.

Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 19, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 10 to 16 and insert—

‘6th April 1955 to 5th May 1955

6th May 2020

6th May 1955 to 5th June 1955

6th July 2020

6th June 1955 to 5th July 1955

6th September 2020

6th July 1955 to 5th August 1955

6th November 2020

6th August 1955 to 5th September 1955

6th January 2021

6th September 1955 to 5th October 1955

6th March 2021

6th October 1955 to 5th November 1955

6th May 2021

6th November 1955 to 5th December 1955

6th July 2021

6th December 1955 to 5th January 1955

6th September 2021

6th January 1956 to 5th February 1956

6th November 2021

6th February 1956 to 5th March 1956

6th January 2022

6th March 1956 to 5th April 1956

6th March 2022’.

Amendment 20, in clause 1, page 2, line 17, leave out ‘1954’ and insert ‘1956’.

Amendment 21, in schedule 1, page 20, line 19, leave out paragraph (6) and insert—

6 In section 126 of the Pensions Act 1995 (equalisation of and increase in pensionable age etc.) in paragraph (a) delete “2024” and replace with “April 2020”.’.

Amendment 22, in schedule 1, page 20, line 31, leave out ‘December 2018’ and insert ‘April 2020’.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Like the Minister, I look forward to serving under your chairmanship for the duration of the Committee, Mr Brady, and to working with Members from both sides of the House as we work through the Bill.

While I welcome some aspects of the Bill, the purpose of this group of amendments should be clear. Collectively, they seek to amend the Bill’s acceleration of the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women and ensure that there is no rise to age 66 before 2016 for men and 2020 for women, as in the coalition agreement, but allow for a faster increase to 66 between 2020 and 2022. Clause 1 preserves the existing timetable set out in the Pensions Act 1995, which means that women will reach pensionable age at 65 if born after 5 April 1955. For women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1955, state pension age will gradually increase over a decade—and indeed, has started to do so—rising one year in every two. Our amendment brings forward the increase for men and women to 66, accelerating that by four years to between 2020 and 2022 rather than between 2024 and 2026. That will ensure that a decent notice period is given, that men and women are affected equally, and that no single person has their state pension delayed by more than a year. This amendment brings to the table changes for which so many people have campaigned tirelessly over the last few months. I would like to express my gratitude to Age UK, which organised a mass lobby of Parliament for those women affected, and to Saga, which organised an online petition and has done so much lobbying. Age UK has also published an excellent yearbook that puts names and faces to the statistics and numbers that we shall be debating today.

The amendments make no specific proposals to change the current timetable for increasing the state pension age to 67, and then to 68, as legislated for in the Pensions Act 2007, although we accept—as do the Government, I believe—that increasing longevity will eventually cause those to be revisited. I welcome the Green Paper and the outcome of the consultation of a more systematic mechanism for uprating the state pension age in the future. As I am sure the Minister will agree, the state pension age needs to rise in order to pay for a more generous basic state pension, linked to earnings. That principle was established by the Labour Government in 2007, as part of the implementation of the Turner review, and is one that we continue to support.

We do not challenge the life expectancy projections that the Government have used to underpin their policy changes, and we understand that life expectancy has increased, even since the Turner report. Average life expectancy for those who reach 65 in 2026 has increased by 1.5 years for men and 1.6 years for women. It is therefore reasonable that the Government took the state pension age to review when assuming office over a year ago. However, in the coalition agreement the Government were clear that they would review the state pension age, but that it would not start to rise to 66 before 2020 for women and 2018 for men. Yet the timetable set out in the Bill, as hon. Members know, sees women’s state pension age start to rise to 66 in 2018. What new evidence has the Minister seen since the coalition agreement was signed, that has caused this U-turn?

We know that the timetable proposed in the Bill will affect some 4.9 million people: 2.6 million of them are women, 2.3 million are men. But most worryingly—this is the cause that so many people have taken up—500,000 women will have to wait more than a year to receive their state pension, and of those, 300,000 women will have to wait 18 months or more. Thirty-three thousand women unlucky enough to have been born between 6 March 1954 and 5 April 1954 will have to wait exactly two years longer before they receive their state pension. A delay of two years translates to a loss of income of over £10,000 for all recipients of the basic state pension. For those in receipt of pension credit, that figure is nearer to £15,000.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

Can my hon. Friend tell me whether she has also included, in the figures on the loss of pension that someone might expect to suffer, some of the passported benefits that go alongside the state pension, such as winter fuel allowance, free bus travel, free prescriptions and free dental care? Have those been taken into account in determining the loss for that group of women?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Of course, it is not only women who will lose out because of the increase in the state pension age. At the moment, passported benefits track the women’s state pension age, so the free bus pass is available to men and women in accordance with the women’s state pension age. Both men and women will lose out on some of the passported benefits that my hon. Friend mentioned because of these changes. My hon. Friend mentioned bus passes, but there are a whole range of benefits, including help with council tax, housing benefit and the winter fuel allowance. An answer to a parliamentary question shows that as a result of these plans, for example—

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

Has the hon. Lady come up with the cost of her proposals, and how does she expect to fund them? Interestingly, we had a similar debate on Second Reading, and never got an answer from the Opposition on how they would fund the changes they were proposing. It is a simple question: what is the value of these changes, and how would you fund them?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I am unsure whether the hon. Gentleman was there for the entire debate, or has read Hansard, because I set out Labour’s alternatives very clearly, as did the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. They are backed by Age UK and Saga. The Opposition propose that we stick with the current equalisation timetable—equalise men and women’s state pension age to 65 in 2020—but then increase the state pension age for men and women to 66 between 2020 and 2022, bringing that forward by four years. The Government’s proposals save £30 billion; our proposals save £20 billion. As hon. Members from all parts of the House have said, however, there is also the possibility of bringing forward the increase to 67 and 68, which we asked the Government to look at. Answers to parliamentary questions show that that would save significantly more than the Government’s proposals.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Let me just finish my point. The Government have set out to eliminate the Budget deficit within this Parliament; the Opposition have set out to halve it. Neither proposal has any impact on eliminating the Budget deficit, because none of these savings kicks in until 2016 at the earliest, and they cover a 10-year period between 2016 and 2026. We must ensure that state pensions are sustainable, but the changes that we have proposed will make savings over time, and they start to kick in just two years later. Critically, our changes mean that nobody has to wait for more than a year longer before they receive their state pension; they affect an equal number of men and women; and they mean that people get at least nine years’ notice of any changes to their state pension age.

The proposed changes in the Bill will kick in in 2016 when the state pension age changes. For that reason it is right to look specifically at the 500,000 women who will have to wait for more than a year longer before they receive their state pension, as Members from all sides of the House said on Second Reading. Yes, we need to make savings, but I would like to see that done in a fairer way that impacts men and women equally, gives people fair notice and does not require anyone to wait for more than a year longer before they get their state pension.

On Second Reading, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Pensions Minister said that transitional arrangements would be looked at. We would like to see those arrangements, but the Government have not tabled any amendments for us to consider in Committee. I do not think that that was the expectation of many Members, from all parties, when we discussed this on Second Reading.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

We will hear from the Minister on the points that the hon. Lady raised in due course. I would like to make two points. First, with regard to halving the deficit, I am delighted that she has at least started to talk about that, or reducing part of it. It would be very interesting to hear in another debate, perhaps from the shadow Chancellor, exactly which areas the Opposition are talking about cutting. We have not had that spelt out, so it will be interesting to hear.

Secondly, returning to the cost of her proposals, the hon. Lady made it absolutely clear that on Second Reading we talked about the Government’s proposal to save £30 billion and the Opposition’s proposal to save £20 billion. There is a £10 billion hole, and in all that she has said I do not think that the hon. Lady has explained how that shortfall will be made up.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The £20 billion is a saving compared to the current Budget, as is £30 billion, but neither meets the target of eliminating the Budget deficit in this Parliament. We are willing to look at proposals that cost less money. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead has proposed amendments that cost less than the amendment that we are currently debating. We have not, however, had any proposals from the Government about how they can support these 500,000 women. [ Interruption. ] Will the hon. Gentleman let me conclude?

Life expectancy has increased, but as I said earlier, it has increased by 1.5 years for men and 1.6 years for women since the state pension age was last examined. Thirty-three thousand women are being asked to work for two years longer and 300,000 women are being asked to work for 18 months longer. Why are 500,000 women being asked to bear so much of the burden for this policy, and why are they being asked to work for longer than the increase in their life expectancy? I am not saying that change is not needed; I recognise, as the Turner report set out, that the state pension age must increase as people are living longer. I want to work with the Government on fairer proposals, but we have not seen the transitional arrangements. We are proposing an amendment that is fairer, makes £20 billion of savings, and affects an equal number of men and women. It also gives people that nine-year notice period. In the absence of the extremely disappointing absence of any firm proposals from the Government, this proposal is a way of saving money, but also treats people fairly.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I will intervene one last time. The hon. Lady is being slightly disingenuous. She has acknowledged the fact that the Government are talking about £30 billion of savings and the Opposition are talking about £20 billion, so there is a £10 billion shortfall and she has not explained to the Committee where that £10 billion shortfall will be made up. I look forward to hearing throughout the next few days how she is going to come up with that figure.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

rose—

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

Order. Before the hon. Lady replies, I do not mind at all if she subtly wants to weave in reference to the overall strategy for budget discipline and deficit reduction, but I hope we are not going to divert entirely on to a debate on that subject rather than on the amendment.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I plan very much to speak to the terms of this Bill, but this is outside the period of the comprehensive spending review and the budget deficit reduction plan. As I have said, we are willing to look at other proposals, but the Government have not tabled any. We are also willing to look at increasing the state pension age to 67 and 68, which if brought forward by one year—I will come on to some of these numbers later today—will save £7 billion, and if by two years, around £13 billion. So there are other ways of addressing increasing longevity that I believe are fairer, but will also save money.

The critical point that so many hon. Members in all parts of the House raised on Second Reading is the unfairness to this specific group of women. So while hon. Members from all parties said that yes, we need to increase the state pension age—I said it in my speech, the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said it in his—I want to find a fairer way of doing so, which gives people the notice period they need to make plans for their retirement.

I was hoping, given what the Secretary of State and the Pensions Minister said on Second Reading, that those transitional arrangements would be brought to this Committee, but the Government have not done so. That is extremely disappointing.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I declare an interest, as a woman born in 1960. The hon. Lady has alluded on a couple of occasions to 500,000 women who are affected by this Bill and to 33,000 women who are being asked to work more than two years. Would she not agree that the vast majority of women are being asked to work for at least two years longer, and what does she propose to do about that group of women?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Well, at the beginning I said that 4.9 million people are affected by the Bill—2.6 million women and 2.3 million men. Of that 4.9 million affected, 500,000 people are having to wait more than a year longer, 300,000 for more than 18 months and 33,000 for exactly two years longer. Everybody believes that people need to work longer to have an affordable state pension. That was set out by the Turner report and I continue to support that, as do all Opposition Members.

The issue is around those 500,000 women and why I and so many hon. Members who spoke on Second Reading believe that it is unfair that this group of women are particularly impacted.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

The hon. Lady referred to a particular group of women and I am curious to understand. The Bill is in effect about drawing a line somewhere. The hon. Lady is proposing that a line be drawn in a different place. Would that not raise questions for other groups of people?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I am sorry; I understand the point now. The proposals that we have put forward are: no further change until 2020 to keep with the current equalisation timetable, then between 2020 and 2022 increase the state pension age between 65 and 66 for both men and women. I have the impact assessment here and I can check the exact numbers, but I think 1.3 million fewer people are affected by that timetable. Crucially, an equal number of men and women are affected. Nobody has to wait more than a year longer before they get their state pension, so obviously no one has to wait two years longer. Those changes also give people nine years’ notice, so they affect fewer people. Nobody has to wait for more than a year and it gives people a notice period which enables them to adjust their financial and working plans to adapt to the changes. Did the hon. Lady want to come in again?

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

Just to clarify that there will always be a group of women with some level of birth date who will have to work for more than two years longer.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

No. The hon. Lady is not correct on that. In the impact assessment, the Government set out two different ways in which they could increase the state pension age. The first is the way that the Government are pursuing, which, as I say, impacts 4.9 million people, 500,000 for more than a year. The second proposal that the Government put forward in their earlier consultation would mean, as I am proposing, that there are no changes before 2020 and we stick with the current equalisation period. The reason that women are having to wait for more than two years longer is that two things are happening at the same time: bringing forward equalisation and increasing the state pension age all within the same period of time. That is why people will have to wait up to two years longer and more than a year longer.

If you kept with the current equalisation timetable then increased the state pension age from 65 to 66 between 2020 and 2022, 3.6 million people would be impacted by that change—1.3 million fewer than under these proposals—and nobody would have to wait for more than a year longer before they got their state pension. An equal number of women and men are affected.

One of the crucial points is that that would give people an adequate notice period. Lord Turner, in his report, recommended a 15-year notice period. The Pensions Policy Institute recommended a 10-year notice period. These changes kick in in five years, and the women most impacted—those who have to wait for two years longer—have seven years’ notice. Most experts believe that that is not sufficient time. We can come on to some of the details about the working patterns of women in their late 50s and early 60s, but many of these women have already taken on caring responsibilities, either for elderly parents or young grandchildren. Some of these women, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) and the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) said on Second Reading, have taken redundancy pay, particularly perhaps from local government, in anticipation of their state pension kicking in at 63 or 64. They have done all the financial planning around that and then they have seen the goalposts moved again.

Critically, under the proposals that I am putting forward, nobody has to wait for more than a year longer before they receive their state pension, although of course people would still be affected by these changes, as they were by the changes that the Labour Government legislated for and the previous Conservative Government legislated for in 1995. They are the right things to do. As longevity increases it is right that people work longer and wait longer before they get their pension. As a result they get a more generous pension, certainly under the Turner recommendations, than they would have done previously. However there is a specific issue about those 500,000 women and asking people to wait for more than a year longer with such short notice.

Marcus Jones (Conservative, Nuneaton)

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she has been very generous in taking interventions. In relation to the state pension—the hon. Lady has just said that it is important that our pensioners receive a better state pension—would she not acknowledge that the coalition Government have actually increased the state pension by introducing the triple lock guarantee? Therefore pensioners who are retiring will receive up to £15,000 more during their time receiving a pension than they would have under the Labour Government.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I would say two things to that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, when Turner reported he recommended that three things were done—first, that the state pension age was increased; secondly, that the earnings link was restored; and thirdly, that automatic enrolment was introduced. As a result, we legislated for those three things to happen. As the hon. Gentleman knows, automatic enrolment kicks in next year. Under Labour’s plans, the earnings link was to be restored in 2012. The Minister knows that.

Marcus Jones (Conservative, Nuneaton)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Let me finish the point that I am making; then I will give way. The earnings link was to be restored in 2012. So there was automatic enrolment, the earnings link, and the state pension age was to be increased to 66 between 2024 and 2026; then to 67 between 2034 and 2036 and to 68 between 2044 and 2046. They were the three components of the Turner report that the Labour Government implemented. It did not happen within our time in office but was legislated for and was to happen before the increases in the state pension age and at the same time that automated enrolment was introduced. It is right that people wait longer for their pension, particularly if that pays for a better pension when they get there.

The £15,000 difference is the difference between the triple lock and keeping with the old inflation index. It is not a difference between what would have happened under a Labour Government and what is happening under the coalition agreement. It is the difference between inflation uprating—which was in no party’s manifesto—and the triple lock. I do not accept the point that pensioners are £15,000 better off under this Government. They are better off with the triple lock than with the old inflation linking, but continuing with the inflation linking was not in anyone’s manifesto commitment.

I also say to the hon. Gentleman that it is not really much consolation to the 500,000 women who will be without their state pension for a year, and particularly not much consolation to the 33,000 women who will be without their state pension at either the earnings-uprated or inflation-uprated level. The poorest women, on full pension credit, will miss out on £15,000 if they lose their state pension for two years, and that is before the passported benefits that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South mentioned earlier are taken into account. For those two years, many of these women have very few savings to draw on. The average woman aged 57 has £9,100 pension savings and 40% of these women have no private pension savings, so they are very reliant on the basic state pension and in many cases, the pension credit as well.

It is very difficult to know how those women will get by for those two years. Many will continue to work but some are not in a position to do so. Many have already made decisions about their working hours, cutting them back to care for elderly parents or young grandchildren. Many have taken redundancy payments based on financial calculations. What I particularly object to in the Bill is the fact that people have had so little notice. With all the will in the world, there is no way that those women can make up what they will lose within that six or seven-year period. They might get a better pension in the long run, compared with the inflation link rather than compared with the previous Labour Government, but that is not a huge consolation for women during that period of time.

Steve Webb rose—

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I shall make one more point before I give way to the Minister. Everyone benefits from the restoration of the earnings link, or the triple lock. Why do a group of women have to pay a particularly harsh price so that everybody—you, me, a 52-year-old woman, a 62-year-old man, all of those people—can benefit from the restoration of the earnings link? Why are we asking 500,000 women to pay the price of restoring the earnings link for everybody? To pay for a better state pension in retirement we need to increase the state pension age, but I do not see why that should be done in a way that disproportionately hits that group of women, who have so little time to prepare for it.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am sure that the hon. Lady would want her speech to be based on fact rather than assertion. She is talking about the particular group affected by the clause and the amendment. She said:

“Many of them will have taken redundancy payments.”

Can she tell us how many?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

No, but if the Minister has that information to hand that would be useful. On Second Reading I commented on two points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South and the hon. Member for Chippenham, who talked about people in their constituencies who had made these decisions—[ Interruption . ]

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

If the Minister wants to supply that information—[ Interruption . ] It was a point made on Second Reading and it is about putting faces to some of these statistics. We know that these women are in a number of different situations. Many women have written to us about caring for elderly parents, supporting their sons and daughters going back to work while taking on child care responsibilities for them. Other women have written to us saying that they took redundancy payments from work. I have received letters like that, and clearly those two Members who spoke Second Reading had as well. Those women have done their financial calculations based on when their state pension would kick in, and when their occupational pension—if they were lucky enough to have one—would kick in.

The central point is about the time we are giving people to prepare for these changes. If people are given 10 years’ notice, they can adapt their plans. They can build up savings, adjust their hours at work or adjust their caring responsibilities. But to make these changes that kick in in 2016 with just five years’ notice—seven years’ notice to the people most impacted by these changes—is unfair. The hon. Gentleman, and Members from both sides of the House have received the yearbook, “Class of 53/54” from Age UK, which sets out six or seven accounts of individuals affected. Everyone has their own story to tell; I could give some stories from constituents of mine, as I am sure all hon. Members can. The point is that with just five or seven years’ notice to plan, it is very difficult for that group of women to adjust their plans, whatever those plans, set in motion, were. If people are given more notice, it is more likely that they can adjust those plans, and that is why Turner recommended 15 years’ notice, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

The pertinent point here is that 3.4 million carers are women, and one in five carers are aged between 54 and 60, and that is the peak time for caring. That is the group that will be impacted by these proposals.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point and those statistics. Again, the point about carers is a key one, and was raised by other hon. Members on Second Reading. It is another reason for the Government to come back with some transitional arrangements to particularly help that group of 500,000 women who have to wait for more than a year longer. All of us know, from our constituencies, women who say: “I’ve done all the right things; I’ve brought up my family, I’m trying to help my daughter go back to work by doing the child care two days a week, while also juggling work.”

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

rose—

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

rose—

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I will give way in a moment to both hon. Members, but let me finish the point. These women are trying to do the right thing, but they feel that the pension age is like a horizon, always in the distance, and they can never reach it. The goalposts have moved again, but not with sufficient time to enable them to adjust their plans.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

The hon. Lady acknowledged in her opening remarks that we are living longer, and changes are being made to the pensions system that were made under her Government, and will be made under this Government. I would like to take her back to what was said to the TUC in September 2004 by the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). He categorically said:

“This Government will not raise the state pension age.”

Yet, in 2005, Labour’s own pensions commission said that the age should go up, and in the Pensions Act 2007, as she said herself, Labour legislated to increase it for men and women. Does she think that it was unfair that Labour changed the goalposts at that time?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I do not have the benefit of seeing the information that the hon. Gentleman has seen, but I think there is a consensus across the House that the state pension age needs to increase as people live longer. I want to build consensus, as Labour did in the Pensions Acts 2007 and 2008, because that is the right way to approach pensions policy. We can all look for division, which is what the hon. Gentleman is doing, but I want to build consensus. Labour, in 2007 and 2008, built a cross-party consensus to implement the Turner review, and as a result we had changes that made the system fairer and more sustainable, and will bring more people into pensions savings through automatic enrolment. I would like this Government to approach pensions reform in the same manner, because if we do that we can build a fairer policy, and a sustainable system. But consensus is, and was, hard won. There were negotiations to be had with business about automatic enrolment, and with the trade unions about the state pension age. Labour took on those arguments, and built a consensus across the trade unions, who recognised the need to increase the state pension age, and with the business community, who by and large supported automatic enrolment. I believe that the Government are beginning to unravel that hard won consensus. They are doing so by trying to bring forward changes at a rate that does not allow people to prepare, and particularly penalises a group of women who I think we all believe will be unfairly impacted.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she has been extremely generous with her time. Did she see the article by Alice Miles published in the New Statesman recently? It is not a publication that is normally very friendly to the coalition Government’s policies, but the article said:

“The half a million or so women whose cause is being championed particularly loudly at the moment are not the only ones who will be caught by the higher pension age. They are simply the ones who have been given a bit less notice of it. For those in work, however, seven years is a reasonable warning time. I keep hearing that the time frame isn't long enough to enable them to plan financially. Plan for what? They should just keep working.”

What does the hon. Lady say to that?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

First, I do not believe that the article is correct in the assertion that these women are impacted by the same amount of time as other people. As we all know—though I am unsure if the journalist recognises it—those 500,000 women have to wait for more than a year longer, which nobody else will have to do. That is a key point that the journalist perhaps failed to take on board. I will expand my answer, and if the hon. Lady still has questions then she can come back.

We know that many of these women have already shifted their hours to part-time work. That was in the impact assessment. Many of these women are already working part time, and have made that decision based on assumptions about when their state pension, or any occupational pension, would kick in. They have done the financial planning, and the letters that we received back up the evidence that we saw in the impact assessment. As Age UK says, women start working part time, in anticipation of retirement, much earlier than men. This is because, as the hon. Member for Arfon mentioned, it is predominantly this group of women that takes on caring responsibilities. I am sure that we all have examples from our own families of women in their late 50s or early 60s acting as carers for their parents or grandchildren. I do not accept, therefore, the idea that these women can just carry on working. They are continuing to work, not just in paid roles but looking after families as they age, as the Dilnot report recognised on Monday. These women are working, and probably working harder than many of us, but not always in paid work.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

The point here is the gender effect. I am subject to the whims of the electorate of Arfon and might lose my job in a few years’ time, although I hope not. A large number of women, however, have long-term caring responsibilities and do not have the ability to change their responsibilities in that way. For example, of the estimated 662,000 carers who combine part-time work with caring, 89% are female. There is a gender effect; that is the point that I wish to make and that I am sure the hon. Lady will make very ably as well.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he sums up very well why the article in the New Statesman gets it wrong in many ways. These women are working incredibly hard. Many of them are trying to juggle paid work with caring responsibilities. Many of them are caring not just for elderly parents but for young grandchildren too. They work incredibly hard, and asking them to wait for more than a year longer will throw many of them, and their plans, into turmoil.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

Does my hon. Friend agree that this debate has got off to a good start? This is partly because it shows a serious difference of opinion between the two sides of the Committee. Government Members seem entirely relaxed—indeed, rather enthusiastic judging by their well-researched questions—about the fact that a disproportionate burden, following the deficit, falls on this particular group of women. The Opposition’s argument is that longevity has policy implications—we do not deny that and we did not deny that in Government—but the timing and proportionality has to be right. It is for Government Members to defend to the women in their constituency their enthusiasm for laying this heavy burden on a very small but significant group of women.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. In many ways I agree there has been a good start to the debate, but in other ways I am surprised. On Second Reading there were, I believe, 24 Back-Bench contributions. Of those 24, 22 said that although they supported many aspects of the Bill, they recognised the disproportionate impact on these 500,000 women—the point that I and other Opposition Members have been making. Yet this morning, Government Members have not so far recognised the disproportionate impact on this group of women or any understanding about how difficult it will be for this group of women to adjust to those plans.

Harriett Baldwin rose—

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I will give way to the hon. Lady, who has 1,300 women aged 56 and 57 in her constituency. Perhaps she can explain to them why she thinks it is fair that they are disproportionately hit by the proposals in this Bill.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

In amendment 19, birthdays on 5 April 1956 are the latest in her table and mine is only four years later than that. I have been asked in my career to extend my working life by six years—to 65 and now to 66—which is considerably longer than someone born on 5 April 1956, who the hon. Lady says should extend her working life by only one year.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The hon. Lady either does not understand, or want to understand, that this group of women has already absorbed the increase in the state pension age, as the hon. Lady has. In total, these women will have to work for six additional years compared with what they were told before 1995. In 1995 those women were given 15 years’ notice of changes to the state pension age and that change was staggered over a 10-year period. These women are being asked to absorb what the hon. Lady has, but also an additional year or more with just five to seven years’ notice of that change. I did not have an explanation from the hon. Lady about how she will explain it to those 1,300 women in her constituency, but she has plenty of time and I hope to hear that explanation later on.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

There has been a lot of talk about this large number of women—500,000 in one category of more than a year, and 33,000 of more than two years. There is also discussion of another large group of women who have caring responsibilities in a particular disproportion. It would be helpful to this debate to hear how those categories overlap. What percentage of the 33,000 are currently not in full-time work, undertaking caring responsibilities or likely to be on pension credit? The same three questions apply to the 500,000, because the proposals the hon. Lady is making are going to cost £10 billion. Is £10 billion, through the changes suggested, the best way of helping this defined population, which is clearly much smaller than 33,000 and 500,000, which are the only figures the hon. Lady has given us?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I am sure that, like other hon. Members, the hon. Gentleman will have read the Government’s impact assessment which sets out the proportion of women in work in different age brackets, and also the proportion in part-time work. I do not have the number of the 33,000 and 500,000 women who are carers, as that is not an analysis that the Government, as far as I am aware, have undertaken.

I have not had the privilege of meeting those 500,000 women but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, Saga, Age UK and some of the trade unions have done online petitions and in those petitions have asked people to tell their stories. That is where the Age UK yearbook “Class of 1953/54” has come from. That book sets out many of these issues. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that all this information should be available before we make a decision on what to do about the state pension age, I wholeheartedly agree. We need the information to be able to make these decisions, but instead we are asked to vote on these increases without taking into account the real impact they will have on the lives of those 500,000 women who will have to wait for more than a year before they get their state pension, the 300,000 women who will have to wait for more than 18 months before they get their state pension and the 33,000 women who will have to wait for exactly two years.

Our postbags contain evidence from our constituents, and I am sure that many of the 1,300 women aged 56 and 57 in Grantham and Stamford have written to the hon. Gentleman, so he will have an idea of the challenges that these women face—challenges resulting from ill health or caring, or from having made irreversible decisions about their working hours, or from having lost their job and having to wait before they get their state pension.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford raises again the kind of issue that was raised on Second Reading. On several occasions, it was suggested that some form of transitional arrangement for a sub-group or part of this group who had particular issues might be provided. Has my hon. Friend heard anything further about whether there would indeed be such transitional arrangements?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

After Second Reading, I wrote to the Minister setting out what he and the Secretary of State had said on Second Reading on these points, and saying that the Opposition recognised the need to build consensus and would be willing to work with the Government and look at transitional arrangements. I was disappointed not to receive a reply to that letter, and I was hoping to ask the Minister why he did not acknowledge my letter, and whether he has any intention of bringing forward transitional arrangements. Perhaps we will come to that point later.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The hon. Lady has been very patient with me. I fully admit that I am a newcomer to this subject, but that is one reason why I seek some simple facts. She is making an alternative proposal that she admits herself has a price tag of £10 billion, so it is incumbent on her and her hon. Friends to provide the evidence that the number of people who genuinely need that help is sufficiently large to justify her proposal and its massive cost.

The hon. Lady refers to the numbers in all our constituencies. My constituency is not a particularly rich constituency. It is not in west Oxfordshire or Surrey, but Lincolnshire, and I have to tell her that of the 1,300 women who she says will be affected by this proposal—and I have no doubt that she is right on that number—fewer than 30 have actually written to me. I am sure those 30 are just the tip of an iceberg, and that many have not written to their MP because they have not thought of it, or they do not think it will make any difference. Nevertheless, is that iceberg the full 1,300, or are some of those 1,300 perhaps in full-time work and therefore the prospect of extending their working lives—though not great, not welcome—is not impossible to imagine? Maybe some of them are married to people who are in full-time work and who have other pension arrangements, so the right thing to look at is their entire family pension arrangements not their individual pension arrangements.

We need to understand whether it is just the people who write to us who are affected so badly, or whether there are a huge number of others. Just to bandy about the figures of 500,000 and 33,000 is not good enough when one is trying to spend £10 billion.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. On pages 64 to 65 of the equality impact assessment that the Government published in November 2010 in relation to these proposals, it sets out labour market activity as a percentage of the population. Then it sets out the reasons for inactivity. I will take the hon. Gentleman through this information, which I am sure he has read. Of the population aged from 55 to 59, 71.3% of people are employed, compared with 78.4% of people aged from 50 to 54. Of the people aged 55 to 59, 3.8% are unemployed and 24.9% inactive. So 24.9% of people in their late 50s are inactive. If you look at that across men and women, 18.1% of men aged 55 to 59 are inactive, while 31.5% of women aged 55 to 59 are inactive. The employed includes part-time and full-time workers because the impact assessment does not break down what proportion of these women work full-time and what proportion, of the 66.1% in work, work full-time or part-time.

As for the reasons for inactivity: to recap, 24.9% of people aged 55 to 59 are inactive; 18.1% are men and 31.5% women. Of those who are inactive in their late 50s if you look at the population as a whole, 47.9% are sick, injured or disabled; 18.1% are inactive because they are looking after family and home; 20% are retired and do not want to work. However, if you focus separately on men and women you see very different statistics.

Among men aged 55 to 59, 55.8% of those who are inactive are sick, injured or disabled; 7% look after home or family and 22.8% are retired and do not want to work; whereas among women in the same age range, of those 31.5% who are inactive, 43.5% are sick, injured or disabled; 24.2% look after family and home; and 18.5% are retired and do not want to work. So 24% of those look after family and home, compared with 7% for men of the same age. We see big gaps. I agree that this is not all the information; it would be good to see more when making important decisions like this. However, we see from these limited statistics that there is a difference, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, between men and women in terms of the caring responsibilities that they take on and the differential difficulties that men and women might face adapting to these changes at short notice. There is also a difference in how they will balance—as I was saying to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire—the different types of work, not all of it paid, but work none the less, that these women take on, at home, in the family and in the workplace. I give way.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

Does the hon. Lady agree that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford makes a persuasive and pertinent point when he says that his postbag has been light on this issue? Very few people have written to me. That is one of the reasons why these changes should not be rushed through. People are not aware of them and they will be impacted greatly by the change.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I agree very much with that point. I told one of my close family members that she would have to wait an additional two years for her state pension. She told me, “No I won’t. My state pension has already been adjusted. Those changes have already gone through and I have to wait until I am 64.” She gave me short shrift. The next day she phoned me up again, said she had looked at the information and that I was correct.

Not everybody has as their daughter the shadow Minister for Pensions. She did not believe me—and she is my mother, but there are many women who have no idea that these changes are coming and that is an important point. I have received a large number of letters. I have fewer women aged 56 and 57 in my constituency than the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford does, but I have received a large number of letters about it. In my role as shadow Pensions Minister I receive a lot of letters from people across the country, but that is the tip of the iceberg, not because people do not think that they can make a difference, or that their MPs are interested, but because they just do not know.

The Age UK evidence backs up that experience. It did a survey of women who were particularly impacted—more than 1,000 of them, in a focus group. Very many of them did not know about the changes. In fact, many of them did not know about the changes that were legislated for in 1995. That is a failure of Governments from 1995 until now. The reality is, giving people just five or seven years’ notice of the changes is certainly not sufficient when we are making such big changes to a person’s state pension age.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I get the feeling that the hon. Lady is arguing two inconsistent points. On the one hand, she is saying that people do not know, no one has a clue, some people think that they are retiring at 60—[ Interruption . ] That was the general thrust. On the other hand, she said earlier that all these people, many of whom have taken redundancy, have made meticulous, careful financial plans that we are ripping up. They cannot both be true, can they?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

There are 500,000 women affected by these changes. The Age UK evidence suggested that around 20% of them are not clear about what their retirement date is currently. Many of them are, and the people who are making plans for their retirement, adjusting hours and taking on family responsibilities, are doing the calculations. There will be very different circumstances for all of the 500,000 women and the Minister will have had many letters, with very different scenarios. The people writing to us are the people who do know about the impact, but the Age UK evidence suggests that some people are not aware of the changes. That points to the need, as Lord Turner set out, to give people adequate notice of changes in their retirement age. At 57, most women—Age UK evidence backs this up—do know what their retirement date is. To change it so close to the time is particularly wrong.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The hon. Lady was very helpful in reading out some of those figures. If I have remembered them rightly, she said that about 31% of women between 55 and 59 are economically inactive, and of those, roughly 40% fell into the category of sick or disabled—I cannot remembered exactly how it was defined. Does she agree that there are other arrangements—I am glad to say—in our welfare state for looking after people who are sick and disabled? If they continue to be economically inactive for a longer period of time because the pension age has changed, there is no reason to think that those women will not continue to be supported by the same arrangements, which may or may not be more or less generous, but which will hopefully be adequate to look after them.

The hon. Lady also mentioned that 20% are retired or not working out of choice. One can hazard a guess that they have family or personal circumstances that mean they are able to support themselves without support from the state. That will continue to be true; it will not suddenly change just because their state pension age has shifted. We are therefore narrowing down to a figure of around 40% of her original totals. When one suggests a change that costs £10 billion, it is worth being absolutely sure that this is the best possible way of helping the population group who actually suffer—not who are affected; we accept that the figures are right in terms of being affected—as a result of these changes. Is this really the right way to help these people?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

As I said, many of the 66.1% of women aged between 55 and 59 who are employed will be working part-time. The impact assessment does not subdivide that percentage. There are statistics that show the breakdown of part-time and full-time work for that cohort of women. Many of them will be working part-time. Many of the 66.1% will also be affected negatively and find it difficult to adjust to the plans set out in the Bill. We cannot just consider the inactive ones. Over half of the inactive women, 67.7%, are either sick, injured or disabled, or looking after family and home. Many of those will, I believe, be very adversely affected financially.

The hon. Gentleman points to other benefits, but he will be aware that the pension credit is worth around £140 a week, which is more generous than working-age benefits, and that is before the passported benefits—winter fuel allowance, bus passes, council tax help and so on—that go along with being a pensioner, that these people will miss out on for up to two years. There are very negative consequences for the 67.7% inactive people, but also for some of the people who are still in employment but perhaps working two days a week to balance the other work in their lives, such as caring responsibilities.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

I think my hon. Friend explained very clearly why these issues are important, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford also highlighted that for some people this will mean a particular hardship. I am not detracting from that argument. However, is there not a basic issue of fairness, which is that in changing the state pension age because of increased longevity, we should all pay a share of that additional cost? I have still not heard any explanation from coalition Members why this particular group of women should pay a bigger share than everybody else. Does my hon. Friend agree that there has to be an explanation, if one is possible, why this particular group of women should be asked to pay, perhaps, twice as much as many other people?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

That really gets to the heart of the issue. Everybody is living longer, but there is no evidence that women aged 56 and 57 have had something special in their water that enables them to live much longer than anyone else. However, they are the group of people who are being asked to bear the burden of this policy. The amendment sets out a way of making changes that will affect an equal number of men and women, mean that no one has to wait for more than a year longer, and give people sufficient notice.

I believe that any changes to the state pension age must be fair and must give people notice. I clearly support the amendment. However, there may be other ways that the Government can meet those criteria. I had hoped, from Second Reading, that the Government would set out what the transitional arrangements would look like for the women most impacted by these policies. I was disappointed—as I am sure many hon. Members were—that no amendments have been tabled by the Government, or by Government Back Benchers, about the transitional arrangements, because it was very clear at Second Reading that the Government did want to listen and come up with changes. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister what has happened since Second Reading to cause those transitional arrangements not to be forthcoming.

I would argue that the particular women impacted by these changes have suffered years of inequality in the workplace. Many of them have worked part-time, balancing working life with family life. Many of them were prohibited from joining a company pension scheme. Hon. Members will know that until the mid-’90s many occupational pension schemes did not have to allow part-time workers to join, so many of those women missed out on years of pension savings, and therefore have very little private saving to fall back on. In fact, the average pension savings of a 56-year-old woman are just £9,100, which is nearly six times less than that of a man. The average 56-year-old man has pension savings of £52,800—a vast difference. In fact, 48% of women aged 56 and 57 have no pension savings at all, so changes to state pension age will have a huge impact on those women, not just because of the balance between working and caring, but because that group of women have much fewer resources to draw on during that period than even men of the same age do.

Certain groups will receive an especially strong impact. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North pointed out, those with a lower life expectancy will lose a greater proportion of their state pension—which was also set out in the impact assessment—as will those who depend more on their state pension because of a lack of other savings, and those who are more likely to suffer from health problems. We have already discussed some of those issues this morning. With significant differences between different age groups, a woman born in March 1950 will have started receiving her pension at age 60, while a woman just four years younger will have to wait six years longer to receive her state pension. I do not believe that is fair.

I have mentioned the notice period. When the Conservative Government legislated in 1995 to equalise the state pension age for men and women at 65, they gave 15 years’ notice from the beginning of the change, and indeed, 25 years’ notice before the end, as it was staggered over a 10-year period. When the previous Labour Government legislated to increase the state pension age to 66 in 2007, they gave 17 years’ notice to the start of the process; 27 years’ notice to the start of the process of the increase to 67; and 37 years’ to the start of the increase to 68.

In the Bill, the coalition Government give just five years’ notice before the changes kick in. These changes kick in from 2016, just five years from now, giving much less notice than the 10 years’ notice that Age UK and the Pensions Policy Institute recommended, and less than the 15 years’ notice that the Turner Report recommended. It was also interesting that the PPI said that women probably need more time to prepare for changes in their state pension age than men, because women start to work part-time earlier than men, often to balance—as previously discussed—work and family life.

It is not just Opposition Members or the Members who spoke on Second Reading who believe the impact of these changes to be unfair and the notice period unacceptable. Dr Ros Altmann from Saga said:

“Over the next ten years, women's state pension age will increase by six years, from 60 to 66. Over that same 10 years, men's state pension age will increase by just one year, from 65 to 66. Is this fair? I am not quibbling with the concept of equalising men and women's state pension ages, but the speed of change is very harsh for women. After much talk of men's pension age rising by one year in 2016, the reality is that Government has given men a reprieve, but it is women who are paying for that by a more rapid rise in their pension age”.

Age UK has expressed grave concern that:

“Women worst affected by the Bill's proposal—that is those who need to wait two years extra—would see a loss on average of around £10,000 of state pension income. The proposed speeding up of the state pension age will start in 2016. Therefore it will affect those women who would previously have reached state pension age in above five years time. Those worst affected, who will have to wait a further two years to reach state pension age, are just seven years away from their current state pension date, and many of them are unaware this is happening. Age UK considers that 10 years is the minimum period of notice required for those affected to make changes in their pensions planning”.

Indeed, a recent survey carried out by Age UK suggests that women tend to drop out of the labour market and struggle to return to it. In 2010 quarter 1, 68% of women were economically active, which dropped to just 35% for women aged 60-64. That is set out in the impact assessment, underlining the importance of adequate notice. Only two thirds of the working-age population between 45 and 59 say that they have plans in place for funding their retirement. That will be made harder by the changes and particularly hard for the women, 40% of whom have no private pension savings.

The Bill's timetable would mean that a woman born in April 1953 will be able to get her pension at 62 years and 11 months. Yet a woman born in April 1954 will have to wait until she is 66—three years and one month difference. Many women and men affected by these changes would already have plans under way for hitting what they thought was their state pension age. I have heard from many women up and down the country who have reduced hours or given up work and taken on caring responsibilities. Those women are well on their way to retirement plans. The women hit by these changes are the backbone of our families. They are the mums who took time off work to bring up children, the daughters who are helping their parents as they get older, and the grans who are providing child care for their grandchildren to help their children balance work and family life—something which we all support. I want to ensure that Members hear and understand today what this really means for people—not the numbers and statistics that we have spent a lot of time on already, but for real lives.

Barbara Bates, who started a petition that now has more than 12,000 signatures and was presented to No. 10 Downing street a couple of months ago, says in her testimony:

“My name is Barbara and I am 56.

Since 1995, I have thought that I would retire in 2018, when I will be 64. I have based all my plans for the future on this.

I now have to wait an extra two years to retire—in April 2020, when I will be 66.

I feel robbed—robbed of 2 years of freedom, and robbed of more than £10,000 that I would have received as my state pension. The basic state pension will be my only retirement income, and I have no extra means of coping financially. I will have no option but to try and carry on working.

I agree that women and men should get their state pension at the same age, but this was already happening. There is simply no need to impose this physical and financial burden on women like me, purely because of my age.

There are 500,000 women out there who will have to work for more than a year longer, and 33,000 who, like me, will have to work for an extra 2 years.

I have osteoarthritis in my thumbs and wrists now, which makes the lifting and cleaning work in my job harder: I’m not sure how I’ll manage to the age of 66.”

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I have heard the points that the hon. Lady has made this morning, but I return to the central point that there is a £10 billion hole in her proposals. She must understand that somebody will have to pay for that. Does she suggest that that £10 billion should be foisted on to future generations—in fact, the children and grandchildren of the sort of ladies she is talking about?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I think I addressed it after he questioned me earlier.

Alok Sharma indicated dissent.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

For example, I posed parliamentary questions to the Minister about the increases in the state pension age to 67 and 68. Bringing forward the increase in the state pension age by one year, to 67, saves £7 billion; bringing it forward by two years saves £13 billion. If the Government wanted to look at those changes then, as I set out in my letter to the Minister, we would be willing to see how we could work together to make fairer changes that do not have a disproportionate impact on one group of people. The changes that I proposed today save £20 billion over 10 years, compared with £30 billion, but—again—there are ways to save more money. Ros Altmann from Saga has set that out, as have other people. I do not believe that the Government have looked at all the options that could be deployed to mitigate the impact on those 500,000 women.

I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South mentioned earlier: why should one group of people be so disproportionately hit by these cost-saving measures? Yes, we need to bring down the Budget deficit, but the proposals have no impact on that in this Parliament. Yes, we need to increase the state pension age as people live longer, and the changes that I set out this morning would do that. Other changes could be brought in that would save as much as or more than the Government have set out to save, without having a disproportionate impact on any particular group of people.

On Second Reading the Secretary of State and the Pensions Minister said that they understood the concerns of Members from across the House and would look at transitional arrangements for those 500,000 or 33,000 women. However, among the amendments that were circulated for us to debate today—we will hopefully debate the state pension age again on Thursday—not one was tabled by the Government looking at the transition for that group of women. If the Government really understand and want to listen, why did they not respond to the letter offering Opposition support and help in looking at transitional arrangements? Why did they say that they understood those issues if they are unwilling to bring amendments to the Committee?

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

The hon. Lady makes a very interesting and powerful case. Regarding the example that she gave, what would she say to that lady on the point she made in her opening remarks about the fact that, since the Turner report in 2004, longevity will have risen by 1.7 years for a woman in that cohort?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

It is 1.6 years, but Barbara Bates and the other 33,000 women are being asked to wait for two years before they get their state pension. 300,000 women aged 56 and 57 are being asked to wait for more than a year and a half. They are being asked to wait longer before they receive their state pension than the increase in longevity. That does not seem particularly fair to me. It does not seem fair that so much of the burden of this policy falls on this group of 500,000 women. As I have already said, my proposal gives people an adequate notice period, affects an equal number of men and women, and means that nobody has to wait more than a year longer before they receive their state pension.

I would say to women such as Barbara, “You have already absorbed an increase in your state pension age to reflect the equalisation.” She supports that and we support that, but I would also say to someone like Barbara, “That should be enough for you.” The changes should go ahead up until 2020 and then we should bring forward the increase to 66, which would affect 1.3 million fewer women, make £20 billion of savings and give people an adequate notice period. I would say to Barbara, she has already absorbed a four-year increase in her state pension age and it is not right that she has to absorb another two years with just seven years’ notice.

Marcus Jones (Conservative, Nuneaton)

The hon. Lady misses the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West is making. He is saying that at the end of this Parliament, once we have hopefully eliminated the deficit, this country will still be indebted to the tune of £1.3 billion or £1.4 billion. How does she think we are going to deal with that?

The hon. Lady also stressed that she wants to build consensus with the Government on this issue. She wants to forge that consensus and was hoping to do that today. If that was her true intent, why did she not table amendments that talked more in terms of transitional arrangements that the Government might have found acceptable, rather than the amendments she has actually tabled?

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

Order. Both of those points would be beyond the scope of the amendment that we are debating.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has looked at the amendments that have been tabled for this week and will see that there is an amendment about the pension credit, which is a transitional arrangement. If he thinks that is a suitable transitional arrangement, perhaps he would support it.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

In the evidence that the hon. Lady read out from Barbara there was a very telling little phrase—the assumption that she will continue working. Given that assumption I have to ask, where are the jobs going to come from? There is a regional effect. For example, in Wales there are many more people seeking jobs than there are jobs available. Increasing the number of people in the labour market still seeking jobs will surely have a knock-on effect in many complicated ways. I do not think this has been given particular attention, either this morning, although we have plenty of time, or in earlier debates.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

As Barbara said in her testimony, she has no choice but to try and carry on working because, like 40% of the women impacted by these changes, she has no private pension savings upon which to draw. She has no choice but to try and carry on working. She mentioned that she has osteoarthritis. She works in a funeral parlour in County Durham and does all the cleaning there. If she were to lose her job she would really struggle to get a new job. There are many women, for example in local government where two-thirds of the workers are women, who are very anxious about what the future holds for them. Many women in the private sector are also anxious about what jobs will be available to them if they lose their job.

Cathy Jamieson (Labour, Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

We have heard a lot from the Government side this morning, asking the Opposition what we would do in relation to transitional arrangements. Surely, given the statements by the Minister and the Secretary of State during Second Reading, the 1,200 women in my constituency who are affected would have a reasonable belief that something would have been brought forward for us to scrutinise at this stage of the process. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that we seem to be talking around and about transitional arrangements without any idea as to whether the Government intend to bring those forward?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, and this also picks up on an earlier point. I tabled a series of amendments, as hon. Members know, but I had anticipated that the Government would also be tabling amendments to help with the transition for this particular group of 500,000 women, or the 33,000. I thought that this would be just one of the amendments that we would be debating. In reality, the only amendments we are debating on the state pension age come from the Opposition.

On Second Reading, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said:

“I will quite happily discuss transitional announcements with anyone who wants to do so. I do not rule out discussions, but we plan to press ahead with the dates that I set out at the beginning of the process”.—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 51.]

He went on to say that he heard the specific concerns about a relatively small number of women—although I am not sure 500,000 is that small—and that he was willing to work to get the transition right. The Pensions Minister said:

“I am committed to doing the same, together with him.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 128.]

My reading of that was that the Government were considering transitional arrangements, and would come back with amendments at Committee stage, which is the right point to do so, so that they could be scrutinised by us. We have 10 Committee sittings to consider the Bill. We saw from Second Reading that the most controversial aspect of the Bill is the changes to the state pension age, and I would have thought that this was the time when we would go through the Bill line by line, and look at the parts that Members on both sides of the House had difficulties with on Second Reading. I am surprised—as, I am sure, are many Members, including those who do not have the privilege of serving on this Bill Committee—that there are no Government amendments on those transitional arrangements. As I said, I wrote to the Minister on 22 June. I faxed the letter, phoned his office, and sent it by post as well. At the end of the letter I said:

“It is important that we resolve this confusion during the Committee Stage of the Bill. We are willing to work with you. I would be grateful therefore, if you could share with me the proposal that you are working on.”

I was willing to work with the Government on looking at transition arrangements. That letter has not even been answered, which is disappointing. As I said earlier, when the last Labour Government commissioned Lord Turner, along with John Hills and Baroness Drake, to sit on the Pensions Commission, we felt the need to build consensus with business, the unions, and on both sides of the House, because pensions is a long- term issue, on which we should foster consensus if we are to have sustainable plans set in place. I am disappointed that this Government are not continuing in a similar vein. As I said earlier, consensus is hard won, but easily lost. I really do want to be, and have tried to be, constructive, and the unwillingness of the Government to engage with the Opposition is disappointing. It is also disappointing that no Government amendments have been tabled.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

To be fair to the Minister, I am confident that during the day he will find the opportunity, with the Chair’s permission, to make a full statement about the transitional arrangements that have been hinted at. I hope I am not being too naive in that belief. Time will tell. On the frequent questioning from the hon. Member for Reading West about the connection with the deficit, is it not curious that the hon. Gentleman is so gung-ho about the idea that this group of women, who have borne no responsibility for the creation of the deficit and the financial crisis, and could not have been further away from the scene of the banking crime, should bear this disproportionate burden? Does my hon. Friend have any clues as to why he makes that connection?

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I would be happy to—

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

This is my first Bill Committee, but I think the question was addressed to me, so I will have a go at answering it, if that is okay with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to be the shadow Pensions Minister, I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition will listen to his request. In answer to my right hon. Friend, this does go to the heart of the issue. Yes, we do need to reduce the budget deficit, and we need to ensure that pensions are on a sustainable footing, but it still comes back to this point: why should 500,000 women bear so much of the burden of this policy and this cost-saving measure? I believe that there are ways to do this that are fairer, that give people the adequate notice period, that affect an equal number of men and women and do not require anyone to have to wait more than a year longer before they get their state pension. Saga, Age UK and others have set out ways to save money that do not have these disproportionate impacts. That is what I believe all hon. Members were asking for on Second Reading: for the Government to go away and have a look at it.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North said, it does not seem right that this group of women should bear so much of the burden, particularly when they are so ill-equipped to deal with it. Average private pension savings of £9,100, compared with £52,800 for a man the same age; 40% of them with no pension savings at all. These women are relying on the state pension, more perhaps than many other groups of people. Not only are they being disproportionately hit, but they are a group of people who are ill-equipped to bear this additional burden.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I am an accountant by training and it is the first time I have ever been described as gung-ho by anyone. I do not know whether to take that as a compliment or not. May I clarify the point with regard to the £10 billion shortfall? I am not talking necessarily about the deficit, but clearly that needs to be controlled and the responsibility does actually lie with the previous Government to a large extent. Absolutely it does. Tony Blair made it absolutely clear in his memoirs that the structural deficit had grown significantly.

Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)

Order. I have tried before to bring the hon. Gentleman back into order. It is fascinating, but I do not think we should pursue the point just now.

Alok Sharma rose—

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I have been very generous. I will give way as long as the intervention is on the Pensions Bill and not a question that the hon. Gentleman has already asked. Good luck.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I apologise for bringing the deficit into it. Just to clarify: the £10 billion shortfall is actually a shortfall and it has to be made up somehow. The point that I was making was that that £10 billion shortfall will be made up and paid for—unless the hon. Lady has other, more concrete, proposals—by future generations. That is the simple point that I was trying to make and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman now gets it.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The hon. Gentleman did manage to make his question relevant to the Pensions Bill, but it was one that he had asked before, and one that I have answered already. I will do so again and maybe he will listen—with all due respect, as they say. First, we have set out proposals all outside the comprehensive spending review period. The Government have set out savings of £30 billion over a 10-year period; we have set out savings of £20 billion over a 10-year period. This, though, is for a comprehensive spending review period that has not even started yet. It is not a shortfall in that we are asking to spend additional money. We are saving £20 billion compared with £30 billion. So there is a difference between them, but it is not a shortfall in the sense that we are asking for additional money to be spent on something.

Saga has set out proposals that save more than the £30 billion that the Government’s proposals would save. I know that all hon. Members have received that briefing from Ros Altmann at Saga. Those proposals look at further increases in the state pension age and they and others could save as much as the Government have set out to save, but critically give people the notice period, affect an equal number of men and women and not require anyone to wait for more than a year longer before they get their state pension.

I urge the hon. Gentleman to look at all the facts in this case and the proposals that are fairer. I come back to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North makes: yes we need to increase the state pension age because of increasing longevity, but we need to do so in a way that is fair and gives people an adequate notice period. There is nothing being set out today by coalition Members, in all the questioning that I have taken, that explains why 500,000 women should have to wait for more than a year and why that is fair.

I believe that the Pensions Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions can find proposals that are fairer, give people adequate notice and do not require people to wait for more than a year with just seven years’ notice. That is what I expected the Minister to do when he came back with transition plans—something to mitigate the impact on this group of women. We all agree that we need to make pensions sustainable and to address increasing longevity, but I believe we can do that in a way that is fairer than the Government’s proposal. I hope that answers the question because it addresses how the amount that the Government have set out can be saved in a fairer way.

I told the story of Barbara Bates and I now want to tell the story of Linda Murray, who says:

“I started working at 16 and have worked ever since. For most of my working life I expected to draw a pension at 60 but accepted the increase that was established by the 1995 Pensions Act, which set my current retirement date as July 2018. I would be 64 years and two months old.

But having to wait an extra 22 months at such short notice before I can retire and draw a state pension is not something I expected or had planned for. I work in a very physically demanding job, at a dry cleaners, for 46 hours each week just to make ends meet. I have never had the means to save for a private pension. When I started work, private pensions were not readily available for ordinary workers. We paid our contributions and assumed that we would draw a state pension and that would be sufficient.

Due to my circumstances I know that full retirement is no longer an option. My plan was to greatly reduce my hours when I received my pension and return to part-time work. Now I estimate that I would need to save at least £12,000 just to be able to work part-time from the age of 64. After deductions, I take home £270 at the end of the week and am struggling like everybody else with the rising costs of living. Saving anything is impossible. I will not be able to continue working these demanding hours until the age of 66 and I am deeply worried about my future.”

The timetable proposed in the Bill is ill thought-through and the impact on a particular group of women is unfair and unacceptable. The Government have clearly become aware that the impact is unjust and on Second Reading they talked about transitional arrangements. The Minister for Pensions said:

“My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in his characteristically resolute way, confirmed that the Government believe that we need to equalise more rapidly and reach age 66 as the retirement age more rapidly, but he also said that he recognised that we need to implement that fairly and manage the transition smoothly. He went on to say that he heard the specific concerns about a relatively small number of women and that he was willing to work to get the transition right. I am committed to doing the same, together with him.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 128.]

What a disappointment, then, that no such “transitional arrangements” have been forthcoming. Could the Minister please explain why not? The proposal for the timetable to state pension age in this group of amendments affects 1.2 million fewer people than the proposals set out by the Government. It will affect equal numbers of men and women, and no one will have to have an increase in state pension age of more than a year. In terms of intergenerational equity—a key criterion as set by the Government in their assessment and measured as a proportion of adult life spent in receipt of a state pension—the timetable we propose has a smoother transition to the long-term trend of 32.5% for men and 34.8% for women.

Our amendments would still yield £20 billion of savings. Yes, that is £10 billion less than the Government’s proposals, but we are talking about a post-deficit world. Let us remember that this is £10 billion not as an annual hit, but over a period of years and when we get to 2016-17, GDP will be in the order of £2 trillion a year. Of course we must be fiscally responsible, but we must make balanced, informed and fair choices too. We need to be clear that the timetable for these savings will have no impact on the Government’s plan to eliminate the deficit within five years, as the savings are realised much later.

We all agree that sustainability of the pension system is also core, but not at the expense of moving the goalposts for 500,000 women just as they are about to hit the goal of state pension age in just six or seven years’ time. These amendments present a realistic compromise: they generate savings, improve the sustainability of the pension system, provide a reasonable amount of notice and do not penalise any one cohort of people.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I hope that I do not go too far beyond the scope of the amendment, but I want to address the question of the £10 billion hole that it has been suggested we might encounter as a result of different proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West has provided an answer to that within the ambit of the expenditure on pensions. When we are dealing with such matters, if we want to do something slightly differently we do not always have to find an instant answer. Government is about priorities and making choices, and the Government have chosen to make this saving in this way. One could come up with a whole number of different ways in which a sum of this nature might be found, but I would go well beyond the Committee’s remit if I started to suggest those. It is not good enough constantly to say that we have to implement these proposals, because the alternative would involve finding a certain sum of money.

The proposals alter an understanding and an expectation that has been in existence for a considerable time. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire explained how she, like many people, started her working life with the assumption that her retirement age would be 60, but that has changed. The difference, however, is the much shorter time scale, which means that people have much less time to make arrangements to deal with the change. That is the crux of the issue. Since the phasing in of the increased state pension age was agreed in 1995, many people have had a considerable portion of their working lives to work towards that understanding of when they would retire.

Some of the people whom we are discussing might not be working; they might already have had to stop work or reduce their working hours because of family or caring responsibilities. We know that the vast majority of carers in this country are over the age of 50, and many are already over the age of 60; they are caring sometimes for a partner, or sometimes still for a parent. For many of us in that age group it is precisely the time when caring responsibilities for parents kick in, because people are living into their 80s and 90s. Many people find that they have new and different caring responsibilities that they might not have anticipated. Many people describe that pressure; just as their children have grown up, a whole new set of caring responsibilities comes to light. That is something that will increase.

It has been suggested that it is all right if people in that category are unable to work as a result of sickness or disability, because other state benefits will come into play and they will still get support. We have to be aware, however, that plans are afoot to change a lot of those benefits. If, for example, a woman was unable to work at that point because of sickness, she might claim and be granted employment and support allowance, but if she is placed in the work-related activity group rather than the support category she might find that her employment and support allowance ceases after one year, because the contributory benefit will stop after one year. If she has a partner with an earned income of more than £7,500, she will not be entitled to the means-tested form of that benefit. Indeed, if she has savings that she has made for her retirement, which she has put away in anticipation of either enjoyment in retirement—there is nothing wrong with that—or for future care needs in retirement, which we are being encouraged to do, then she will not qualify for that sort of benefit. She will lose it in other things that are happening. We also have to look at the wider picture, which is often more difficult for someone who has not necessarily built up the same level of pension contribution, as my hon. Friend mentioned.

Women in the past—and I do not think it has entirely changed—have often found it much more difficult to build up the kind of pension entitlements that we would all like to see. That is partly because they have taken career breaks, which many did at some point to look after their children, or because in returning to work or working throughout, they worked in the kind of jobs that suited their other responsibilities. Many of us do that. At the same time, those are often the forms of employment that in the past—and it is not so far in the past—were not even included in pension schemes.

Until more recent legislation, some of it inspired by Europe, brought employment rights to part-time workers, there was not the opportunity to be in a scheme even if one was in employment. One did not get the chance to join, so one does not have that form of record. That is why the pension pot that many women have is so much less than the average pension pot of many men. Many of these women find themselves in a difficult situation.

While it is easy to say that it is only a small change and does not necessarily alter the position dramatically since we shall be equalising pension age anyway and everybody knew that at some point we would move on to increasing pension age to 66, it is nevertheless a double whammy to a lot of these women, who had certain expectations and understandings and who bear the brunt of this. With the relatively small adjustment suggested by this amendment that problem would be overcome. There would still be substantial savings over a period to be made from the increase in the pension age to 66 being accelerated. We have heard a lot about the difference between £30 billion and £20 billion, but it is not as if we were suggesting that we stop that altogether and do not attempt to find a substantial bit of that saving directly. However, there are other ways of dealing with this question without making it particularly difficult for that group of women.

I want to say a little about the notion that we should concentrate on those who have the greatest degree of need. We have not heard whether there will be transitional arrangements, although they were much referred to on Second Reading. Some of us felt that a number of Government Members were perhaps persuaded to vote with the Government on Second Reading because it sounded as if they had received assurances that such arrangements would be put in place.

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat, Eastbourne)

Does the hon. Lady agree with my recollection that the Secretary of State said that there would be transitional agreements?

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

Indeed, I do remember. It would be interesting to see exactly what these might be. When we begin to make that the way out of a difficult problem, there are issues. Exactly how much would that cost? How would we identify those who would fall into this category? What sort of hoops will people be put through to make such applications, if they have to establish that they are a special case? Is it, first, worth it and, secondly, is it something that we really want to do? We have heard a lot in debates on welfare reform about the need to make things simpler and easier, more straightforward and understandable, as well as about the disadvantages of complex applications, for example, for certain types of means-tested benefit when people have to provide a whole range of information about themselves so that they can be assessed. Do we really want that? Is it an adequate response and is there not a danger in that situation that some women, who all seem to agree are particularly disadvantaged by such matters—perhaps more than the raw numbers—might not apply for certain concessions, might not know to do so, and might not receive that form of assistance? We are back facing the criticisms that many on the Government Benches have also made about such applications.

I submit that it is not necessary to go down such a complex road. To make such a relatively minor change within what is a substantial Government budget overall as well as a substantial pensions budget would be fair. Even when we are trying to find savings, fairness and proportionality must be taken into account. It is not all simply about adding up the numbers. Many people who have written to me and have been campaigning about such matters ask the same question. They are all well aware that the Government have choices and are able and willing to spend money on many things. I am not saying that we can pit one against the other, but it would not be impossible to achieve fairness and proportionality within a Government budget.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

I also welcome the increase in longevity and fully accept that we must deal with the consequences. We must all say that before we start putting forward our thoughts. I agree with the amendments; a particular group of women are hit unfairly and the Government should be thinking about developing transitional arrangements. Women will face particular problems resulting from disrupted planning. I referred earlier to the effect on carers, and especially the lack of awareness among a large proportion of people who will be hit by the changes and who will also be facing a potential loss of income. There is also the difficulty of finding employment at any age when faced with a lack of jobs, particularly on a regional and, speaking as a Welsh Member, on a national basis. Certain matters worry me in that respect.

I agree with the hon. Member for Leeds West; such matters are unacceptable and I look forward with interest to hear what the Minister has to offer us later in our proceedings. I also agree with the right hon. Member for Croydon North about the consequences for different social classes. After all, we have known for a long time that there is a class variation for both men and women in respect of longevity and the age of effective retirement, which is also known as economic inactivity to some people. He has an interesting proposal that we shall no doubt discuss later, so I shall not stray into that territory now.

As a member of Plaid Cymru, I want to draw attention to the regional and national variation in longevity for women and whether such matters have informed the Minister’s thinking in respect of transitional arrangements that he might announce. The conjunction between class, gender and location within the United Kingdom and the effect of local job markets and the size of the public sector is complicated. A host of different factors come together. I have no particular answer to the problem. I have not cracked it myself. I see that the Minister is hugely disappointed, though I do not think he is surprised that I am not going to offer him any particular answer.

We have known for a long time that there are regional variations in longevity, for women as well as men. I do not want to burden the Committee with too many figures, but let me give some examples of life expectancy. The much quoted figures for Kensington and Chelsea show that the life expectancy of women at 65 is 26.5 more years, and in Westminster it is 24.1. At the other end of the scale, for Liverpool it is 18.4, for Salford it is 18.5 and for Blackburn it is 18.2. My particular interest is in the Welsh figures. For example, for women in Rhondda Cynon Taff life expectancy at 65 is 18.8 more years, very much in the Blackburn, Liverpool and Salford field. In Blaenau Gwent it is 18.5, and even the best figure for Wales is 22.3 years. If one looks at the life expectancy for women at 65 broken down between England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, one gets figures of 20.6 for women in England; 20.1 for women in Wales; 20 for women in Northern Ireland; and 19.1 for women in Scotland. The figures for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all below the UK average of 20.4. That is also reflected in the figures for men. Very briefly: 18 years for England; 17.4 for Wales; 17.2 for Northern Ireland; and 16.5 for Scotland. The UK average for men is 17.8 years.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

I am following the hon. Gentleman with great interest. He mentioned the figures for Kensington and Chelsea, and alludes to Westminster. Would he also accept that within many of our towns and cities—certainly within the borough of Kensington and Chelsea—there are significant variations by location based on social class?

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, and I agree with him entirely. The gradient of change on a very local level is huge. With these particular figures I am drawing attention to the fact that there also seems to be a regional/national effect, which has been there, consistently, for a long time. By simple inference that will affect the debate around pensions. Life expectancy in poor localities is lower than in richer localities; that is intuitive, but also backed up by the figures. This is also true in terms of gender and class. With respect to the amendment, the particular interest is in the variation among women, to which I have already referred.

I also referred in an intervention to the employment question. There seems to be an assumption that people will work longer and that their jobs will be available. If we accept that people will work longer there will always be implications for employment. My particular problem with the Government’s proposal is that that will be accelerated for this group of women, who will be looking for jobs in areas where they are not available.

Again, I will not burden the Committee with lots of figures, but say a woman was looking for a job in the Prime Minister’s constituency of Witney—having lost hers, or perhaps having given up caring responsibilities at the age of 59, or whatever it is—I understand that there are currently three people seeking work for every one job advertised locally. If one looked at the Rhondda, and believes the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), it is 84:1. If you prefer to believe my figures, taking the number of economically inactive people in the Rhondda to every job advertised locally the ratio is 152:1. Those are huge figures, but I will not go into the detail of how they come about as I am sure that you would interrupt me, Mr Brady. All I am saying is that there are particular regional effects. Such regional and national effects are a question that my party has been dedicated to answering since 1925. We are not much closer to finding answers, to be frank. Our answer, applied with varying degrees of success and failure for much of that period, has been regional and national policy, implemented from here and then devolved and implemented from Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast during the past 12 years.

The right hon. Member for Croydon North proposed tentatively, as we shall see later, that class differences in working life and life expectancy after retirement might be factored into pension provision. No one is suggesting—I certainly am not—that we should do the same sort of thing on a regional and national basis. A phrase used in American politics is “the third rail”. Government policy trundles along happily on two rails, but anyone who touches the middle rail, which carries electricity, is dead. The devolution of pensions is a third rail for anybody with any common sense. However, if one is considering transitional arrangements, there are some things that might be done. Events in Scotland have a certain momentum, of which—to be kind—not everyone in this place is fully aware. I do not know whether that will affect the pensions debate or the benefits debate in general, but substantial changes might or might not come about.

In formulating the proposals, to what extent did the Minister take into account national and regional differences in longevity, particularly for women, and the consequences of local employment markets? Did they influence his decision at all, particularly if he announces anything vaguely like transitional arrangements? Were they put aside as being too complicated? Are they matters to be decided by others, for instance with responsibility for economic development or the devolved authorities?

If transitional arrangements are being considered, the National Assembly for Wales has developed a detailed index of deprivation, ward by ward, which has allowed the Assembly Government to target ameliorating measures at particularly deprived wards. One might speculate about the possibility of doing something specifically about the employment of women in areas where there are lots of them having difficulty finding jobs. Perhaps one could target information at areas where the lack of knowledge about the changes is high. A number of things are possible.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

I am interested in the case that the hon. Gentleman is making about the differences in longevity between different regions, which are likely to be related to differences in social class. Does he also see differences in disability-free life expectancy, which is defined by the Office for National Statistics as

“expected years of life free from limiting long-standing illness”?

I note that the variation is incredibly broad. Figures from local authorities in England and Wales show a disability-free life expectancy at age 65 of 11.7 years for women in Epsom and Ewell and 5.3 years in Merthyr Tydfil. Will he comment on that?

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

The hon. Lady makes an extremely pertinent and interesting point. I will not pursue it now, but Merthyr stands out in terms of limiting long-term illnesses, particularly respiratory and heart problems. There seems to be an assumption that people after the age of 55 or 60 will be able to work and will find jobs, and that those jobs will be commensurate with their ability to perform them. The lady working in the dry cleaners comes to mind. That is a physical job, as is the job of the lady who worked in a funeral parlour. Will people aged 60, 62 or 63 be able to do that sort of thing? One rhetorical question that stood out when I read the background material was, “Are we happy to see our children being taught by someone of 67?” Being close to 67—well, not that close, but closer—I am very happy to teach children, but there are questions about people’s ability. The effect of limiting illnesses is very pertinent.

There may be steps that can be taken, perhaps in conjunction with the Assembly, the Governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and regionally in England, too. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Cathy Jamieson (Labour, Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady, on my first opportunity to be part of a Bill Committee. I would like to make a fairly short contribution in support of the amendments.

As I said in an earlier intervention, I find it somewhat difficult to imagine where the Government propose to take transitional arrangements and what sort of scheme—we may hear later—will be outlined. It would have been more helpful to have had the opportunity to see Opposition amendments and Government amendments in advance, in order to compare and contrast, and perhaps look at securing a way forward on a consensual basis.

The constituents who have contacted me from Kilmarnock and Loudoun estimate that some 1,200 people are affected by the proposals. A range of women, some of whom have been working since they were 16 years of age, some in the same jobs or in the same companies, genuinely believed that they could plan for their retirement. They have described the proposals as a double whammy, having already had to contend with an increase in the state pension age, and are now being expected, in some instances, to work for another couple of years. Others have had career breaks, or have had to give up at various stages, either to look after children or elderly relatives. Many are now uncertain about what will happen. Much as I have real concerns about the direction of travel of the Bill, many of my constituents say that they would not be against transitional arrangements if they felt that they were fair and would help them in this particular circumstance. The difficulty that I have at the moment is that I have nothing to say to them about what the Government are putting forward.

The Opposition amendments are reasonable, rational and proportionate. They suggest a practical solution and give the opportunity for a fairer approach to ensure that the burden—there is a burden; let us not get away from that—is shared more proportionally, over a period of time, by a greater number of people. On Second Reading, we heard, consistently, speaker after speaker after speaker from a range of political parties, not just from the Opposition Benches, identify this relatively small group of women who will be disproportionately affected. I think that there was a general view across the House that something ought to be done about that.

This morning, I have heard some hon. Members suggest that the issue should be fairly straightforward, in the sense that people can simply work longer. I have also heard, however, that it is not as straightforward as that, particularly in the current economic climate and jobs market. Many of my constituents are being made redundant. They might reasonably have expected to continue working for another 10 years or so. They are not just in the public sector, although there are a number of those, but in the private sector too. There are people who will simply not have the option of working for longer in their jobs. The types of part-time employment available in constituencies such as mine, which is not dissimilar to other constituencies in Scotland and across the UK, and particularly the types available for women, have tended to have difficult working hours or involve some form of manual labour—even the care sector involves lifting, handling and other things. It is not reasonable to expect people either to transfer from a job they have had for many years into a new job without training and support or to take on such responsibilities and forms of employment at an age when they could reasonably have expected not to do so.

We heard about longevity. Some might argue that some of the health problems that affected constituencies in the west of Scotland were self-inflicted given the higher number of smokers and the higher rate of heart disease and so on, but so many of those health issues have been and are being addressed. We should welcome the fact that people are living longer, but we have to ensure that they have a reasonable quality of life. One of the issues that I feel most strongly about is the notion that when we plan pensions or look at supporting people in their later years it should be treated as a burden. Those who will draw their pensions when they get to retirement age have paid into the pot over the years. It is not something for nothing. We must change the language and stop treating it in this way.

A number of questions have been posed so far, and there were suggestions from Government Members that the number of people who would be adversely affected was very small because some might take redundancy payments or not be in work in any event. There were suggestions that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West should have had the facts, figures and all the information. I take the view that when issues such as transitional arrangements and the others mentioned on Second Reading are raised, it is incumbent on the Government to go away and look again at the information they have to ensure that all bases are covered. It is for them to come forward with both the required information and the potential changes. I hope the Minister can respond to that.

At this time, it would have been helpful to have more information from the Government about what their plans for the transitional arrangements are, so we could have had a much more informed debate at this stage. Given that there are Opposition amendments on the table, they should be supported. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I hope that some of the notes he has been passed this morning will allow him to illuminate us later in the debate.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

I am pleased to speak in support of the amendment, but I must confess that, like my hon. Friends, I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that I need to do so. Given the comments of the Secretary of State and the Pensions Minister on Second Reading, I, like many others, had expected to discuss a Government amendment to the clause. I thought the Minister understood the concern expressed on both sides of the House about the disproportionate impact his proposed changes to the state pension age will have on a particular cohort of women, now aged 56 and 57, who, under the proposals, will have to wait for more than a year extra before they can access their state pension. They have precious little time to adjust to the change.

As the Whip for our shadow team, I was unable to speak on Second Reading, but as I have taken an interest in pensions over several years, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address a number of issues today. The first is on why the proposals are unfair and in need of amendment. First and foremost, there is a lack of adequate notice. I know that I do not need to tell the Pensions Minister how important it is to get people thinking about their pension many years ahead of their retirement. I am sure that he agrees that when we ask people to plan years, and indeed decades, ahead, it is vital to provide them with the stability and certainty to do so. He said as much himself in October 2009:

“Pension policy needs to be stable and predictable years ahead, not made up on the back of a cigarette packet.”

He was actually commenting on the Conservative plans then in place to bring forward by a decade the raising of the male retirement age from 65 to 66. He does not seem to be following his own advice. Instead, he is springing these changes on women in their late 50s without giving them a realistic time scale in which to make preparations for the loss of pension payments that they had earned and expected over many years.

My constituent Angela Woolley expected to have to work to 64 years and nine months after the 1995 changes. She accepted the extra four and three quarter years as bad luck and the result of being born at the wrong time. At least, though, she had plenty of notice of the change. Now she will have to wait until she is 66 to receive her state pension—an extra 15 months. She describes that extra year and a bit as “a liberty too far”. She said:

“I have worked constantly since leaving school at 15 with only a six month break for maternity leave, fully expecting the Government to keep their part of the bargain.”

For her, the claim that we are all in this together rings hollow. As she says,

“Some of us are clearly in it deeper than others.”

Angela is right to feel aggrieved, because she had done exactly what we want everyone to do: she had saved for her retirement, making contributions to a small private pension scheme. What sort of message does it send to younger women or men when they see people such as Angela, who have done the right thing, having the rug pulled out from under them by this Government? Angela is not the only one in such a position. There are probably 2,500 women in Nottingham affected by the proposals.

I want to talk about another constituent of mine. Lorraine Smedley worked for the NHS for many years. Having put aside some savings, she decided to take a part-time job as she moved towards her expected date of retirement.

Andrew Bingham (Conservative, High Peak)

I have listened with interest to what the hon. Lady says about her constituent who has that extra time to work. Do not Opposition Members understand what damage was done to the value of constituents’ private pensions by the removal of the tax by her Government in 1997? How does that affect the ability to fill in that shortfall?

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

If my constituent had wanted to raise concerns about her private pension, I am sure that she would have done so. However, that is not the issue that she is concerned about. She is concerned about the extra 15 months that she is being asked to work.

Let me now talk about my constituent, Lorraine Smedley. As I say, Lorraine took a part-time job when she moved towards her expected date of retirement. She had worked out that she could supplement her part-time wage until her retirement. She told me:

“I thought I was close enough to my retirement age to know where I stood.”

Now she says she does not know what to do. Working an extra 15 months before she receives her state pension is not a prospect that she relishes. Her job as a community care assistant is physically and emotionally demanding, and she is not sure that she will be able to continue. The prospect of claiming state benefits is anathema to Lorraine. She has been determined to pay her own way all her life. Having left school at 16 and paid into the state pension pot all those years, she feels that she should not have to rely on benefits.

Some of the women in Nottingham face even longer than 15 months’ wait for their pension. Patricia Webber is among those who are the hardest hit by the proposals. Born in June 1953, she is among the 33,000 women who will have to wait two years extra to get her state pension. She understands why things have changed over time. She was in favour of equalisation. She understands that the population is ageing and that changes need to be made, but she rightly asks why just one small group is being singled out. Patricia says:

“I was aware that I would be 63 years four months before I was eligible to claim the state pension. I was prepared for this and feel that this is enough to ask of anyone.”

Like so many of the women whom we are discussing, she is trying to prepare for the extension, but at such short notice, it feels like an impossible task. Patricia says:

“I am saving extra, but the present low interest rates and rising cost of living mean that little headway is achieved…It is difficult to cope in ever changing circumstances…I feel that we women of this age group were just expected not to make a fuss—an easy target.”

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat, Eastbourne)

On that specific point, and to allude to what I said to a colleague earlier, does the hon. Lady not believe that the Secretary of State will implement a transitional arrangement?

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Frankly, I do not know the answer to that question. I certainly hope, given the Secretary of State’s comments on Second Reading, that he intends to implement transitional arrangements, but sitting here in Committee, with the amendments before us, we do not have any Government amendment that aims to do that, so I am somewhat perplexed. Patricia and her colleagues in the class of ’53 have quite rightly made a fuss and have gained support from across the House, and I shall return to that in due course.

The second reason why the proposals are unfair and require amendment is because they lead to one group being asked to bear an unfair share of the burden. According to the Department’s impact assessment, the proposals in the Bill, under which the state pension age for men and women will increase from 65 to 66 between December 2018 and April 2020, will affect around 4.9 million people—2.3 million men and 2.6 million women. Around 300,000 women will have to wait an extra one and a half years or more, while no man will have to wait for more than 12 months. The impact assessment considers a second option, which is exactly what the amendment is calling for. Option two would affect 3.8 million people in total, but women and men would be affected in equal measure. No one would have to wait more than a year to receive their pension, and everyone affected would have longer to prepare for the change.

The assessment explains the decision to reject option two, saying that it is

“hard to justify in view of the significant upward revision in the life expectancy of those reaching age 65 over the next decade, and the consequential fiscal pressures. Those benefiting from increased longevity should share in the associated costs”.

I do not disagree that as we live longer, we need to pay more towards our income in retirement and/or work longer. Like many other people, when I was in my previous pension scheme, we made revisions to our contributions rate and changes to the length of time that we would have to work before we could receive our pension. People accepted that, because they understood that we are living longer, which places a greater burden on our scheme. The women who have written to me do not disagree either—they understand that they may need to work longer. The key phrase, surely, is

“share in the associated costs”,

and the key issue is how we ensure that those shares are fair.

The Minister has simply not explained—he will have the opportunity to do so later—why 300,000 women have to pay a bigger share than anyone else, particularly when we know that they are not well equipped to bear a greater share of the burden.

The third reason is that the proposals break a promise made by the Government just 12 months ago. The women affected by the proposals have already seen their state pension age go up by three, four or five years under the Pensions Act 1995. They had more than 15 years’ notice of that. As many have commented, they also had time to adjust their retirement and saving plans to cover the extra period. Now the Government want to hit the same group again, but this time much harder and with woefully inadequate notice, having said in the coalition agreement that while they agree to

“hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66…it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.”

No wonder so many of the women affected say that they feel robbed.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

I have listened to my hon. Friend with great care. I suppose the reflection is that past Governments’ decisions about how to raise the pension age and move towards equality between the genders have met with remarkable acceptance because of the long time scales, whereas there was rioting in France about the inalienable right to draw one’s pension at 60. The worry now is that that consensus will give way to conflict because of the way in which the Minister wishes to rush the measures through for that group of women.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right. When we look at pensions—or indeed any long-term planning changes, such as those regarding care for the elderly, which we are looking at—it is desperately important that we try to build consensus.

I want to turn to why the unfair burden on women will be hard for them to bear. We have heard that women’s pension age is rising by more than men’s—up to two years in some cases—and that they are being given less notice, with as little as six years’ warning of a two-year change. The women affected are much less financially secure than men, and therefore much more reliant on their state pension. Department for Work and Pensions figures show that 40% of them have no private pension wealth, and if women do have pension savings, they are likely to have far smaller amounts than men. The gender pay gap has narrowed somewhat, but on average women still earn significantly less than men and are therefore much less able to save. If women have been fortunate enough to be in an occupational scheme, even a defined-benefit one, their pension will be lower because their benefits will be based on their salary.

Many women in this group will have taken years out of the labour market to care for children, and that will have affected their contributions record. They might have worked part time, and as a result may not only have earned and saved less but perhaps, until the mid-1990s, been excluded from occupational pension schemes. The Department’s own figures confirm the impact of such factors: men have on average eight times more valuable pension assets than women.

Women are also less likely to be able to make changes to cover the extra delay. They are much more likely to have already retired, perhaps to care for a partner or for parents, as many of my colleagues have mentioned, and 37% of women aged between 56 and 60 are not working and will therefore find it hard, if not impossible, to be in work. If some of them did return to work, assuming they could find a job—many Members have already spoken about the difficulties they would have in doing so, particularly in certain areas of the country—it is likely that the Government would have to pick up the even bigger cost of the caring duties the women were no longer able to carry out. Perhaps the Minister can say more about why he believes that it is fair for this particular group of women, who are ill equipped to cope with additional financial demands as they approach retirement, to be asked to pay a greater share than everyone else.

I want to ask the Minister about a couple of other groups. The first, which I think has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West, was raised by the hon. Member for Chippenham on Second Reading. He expressed the view that the Government have a particular responsibility to former Government employees who have recently taken early retirement—he said “instead of redundancy”, but it could just as easily have been redundancy—and now find that they will not have access to a state pension, even though such access might have been part of their plans when deciding to leave their employment. When my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West raised the issue, the Minister asked her how many people were affected, whether it was 10 or hundreds or thousands. I do not know the answer, but no doubt he is in a good position to tell us how many civil servants have taken early retirement or redundancy in recent years, how many of them fall into this category, and how many are women aged 56 and 57. I would be grateful if he could give us those figures in his response. We all know, from our constituencies, that many other workers, particularly but not just in the public sector, have recently taken early retirement or had to accept redundancy because of the downturn, and have done so taking into account the existing state pension age.

Another group for which carrying on working might be difficult is public servants working in local government. This is something of a niche area, but the issue has occurred to me, so I will mention it. The majority of local government workers—probably about 75%—are women, and the age profile in the sector is skewed towards workers in their 40s and 50s. All local authorities have been reviewing their pay and grading structures in recent years to ensure compliance with equal pay legislation, and after any such exercise, some employees go up the grading structure, some go down and some stay in the same place. Experts in such matters might tell us that usually a third of the workers are in each category. In my experience, one of the biggest concerns for local authority staff, particularly those who are approaching retirement, is the protection of their pension scheme if their job is downgraded. Local authority staff are usually members of the local government occupational pension scheme. Normally, they would have some reassurance, because the final salary on which their occupational pension is based is an average of the three best consecutive years in the last 10. Therefore, as long as they are within a few years of retirement, they will not suffer a significant loss of pension, even if they take a drop in pay.

I am concerned that many women will be in that group. They will have had their job downgraded and will have a pension protected for up to 10 years. They will be affected by the change in state pension age, but they will need to retire as they had planned to protect their occupational pension; otherwise they will face a gap before they can claim their much-needed state pension. Given that the average occupational pension for women in local government is less than £4,000, they clearly will need their state pension to protect them in retirement. What account has the Minister taken of those women in his proposals?

I want to return to my disappointment that the Minister has not tabled his own amendments to the clause. On Second Reading, we heard many Government Members raise concerns on behalf of the 33,000 or 300,000 women who will be hit particularly hard by the proposals, and who will have to wait 18 months or two years extra for their state pension. The hon. Members for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), for Gloucester (Richard Graham), for Salisbury (John Glen), for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) all expressed concern and hope that the Minister would think again. It is disappointing and perhaps a little surprising that none of the hon. Members who made such thoughtful and interesting interventions and speeches on Second Reading are Bill Committee members.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

Why is that?

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

Indeed, many of them did not just express a wish that Ministers would address the issue, but were confident that they would. Particular faith was expressed in the Minister responsible for pensions. The hon. Member for Cardiff Central said:

“I put him on notice today that I trust him to resolve the issue. I am sure that, if he cannot do it, nobody can.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 74.]

I wonder how she feels today as she looks at the list of amendments tabled and sees nothing from the Government to address those concerns. Does she perhaps feel that her trust was misplaced? Why have the Secretary of State and the Minister, who made such reassuring noises on Second Reading about considering transitional arrangements, not tabled any proposals for us to discuss? When the Minister summed up, he noted that the Secretary of State had recognised that the implementation needed to be fair and smooth and was willing to work to get the transition right. The Minister said that he was committed to doing the same. When will he explain how he intends to do that?

Finally, I want to highlight that when we talk about the state pension, we are not just talking about the weekly pension of £97.67 per week—although I appreciate that by the time the changes take place in 2018, that will be somewhat higher. As I said earlier, when someone reaches state pension age, they also receive a number of passported benefits, including winter fuel allowance, free bus travel, free eye tests, free dental work and free prescriptions. All of those are contingent on reaching state pension age. One might anticipate that a woman—or indeed a man—waiting an extra year for their pension would lose out to the tune of around £5,000 a year, but the actual cost will be much higher. Of course, those who have no savings—we know that is 40% of the women whom we are talking about—will also miss out on access to state pension credit.

In 2009, the Minister said it was typical of Tory policy to hit the poorest hardest. I know that the Lib Dems would like to paint themselves as a moderating influence on their coalition partners, so perhaps the Minister can show that he is a moderating influence today by accepting the amendment.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

I am still shocked that the radical voices on the Tory Benches are not on this Committee. Given the Executive’s respect for the legislature, I am almost speechless. [Interruption.] Government Members have, at this stage, found their voice! It would be unfair to suggest that the Government side of the Committee is packed full of trusties and would-be prefects; I cannot believe that that is true. I am sure that Government Members will find their voice and speak up for the women of Britain before too long.

On Second Reading, I made the point that Aneurin Bevan once said that ageing was the peculiar problem of this century. I refer to Aneurin Bevan partly because, as you know, Mr Brady, today is the 63rd birthday of the national health service. That is a key social policy institution that at least one party here—possibly two—have celebrated for 63 years, and not just in recent years.

Katy Clark (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following: amendment 17, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) In sub-paragraph (4) leave out “6 April 1959” and insert “6 April 1955”.

Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 19, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 10 to 16 and insert—

‘6th April 1955 to 5th May 1955

6th May 2020

6th May 1955 to 5th June 1955

6th July 2020

6th June 1955 to 5th July 1955

6th September 2020

6th July 1955 to 5th August 1955

6th November 2020

6th August 1955 to 5th September 1955

6th January 2021

6th September 1955 to 5th October 1955

6th March 2021

6th October 1955 to 5th November 1955

6th May 2021

6th November 1955 to 5th December 1955

6th July 2021

6th December 1955 to 5th January 1955

6th September 2021

6th January 1956 to 5th February 1956

6th November 2021

6th February 1956 to 5th March 1956

6th January 2022

6th March 1956 to 5th April 1956

6th March 2022’.

Amendment 20, in clause 1, page 2, line 17, leave out ‘1954’ and insert ‘1956’.

Amendment 21, in schedule 1, page 20, line 19, leave out paragraph (6) and insert—

‘6 In section 126 of the Pensions Act 1995 (equalisation of and increase in pensionable age etc.) in paragraph (a) delete “2024” and replace with “April 2020”.’.

Amendment 22, in schedule 1, page 20, line 31, leave out ‘December 2018’ and insert ‘April 2020’.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

I welcome you, Miss Clark, to our proceedings. You will find that generally we are a well-behaved bunch, despite the best efforts of one or two of us to break from that norm.

Just before we broke for lunch, I was on my feet for just a minute, probably not without hesitation and certainly not without deviation, as I acknowledged that it was the birthday of the national health service. I will now focus rather more smartly, I hope, on the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West, which I rise to support. By way of context, I shall reflect on the policy implications of increasing life expectancy. I will also argue that generalisations about demography and longevity might create new injustices unless pensions policy becomes more sophisticated and is supported by wider measures.

The Government’s proposals have an obvious context, but perhaps it is not so obvious. It is demographic—several colleagues have spelled out the demographic trends, and I will note one or two statistics myself. We also need to view the issues, albeit briefly, as we are in Committee, in a wider context of trends that have affected life cycles in the 20th century and are now affecting them in the 21st century. Today and in future, typical life cycles are and will be characterised by later entry into the labour market, as well as lives that are lived longer. Therefore, many years are spent in retirement.

Today, many of our children and grandchildren will not enter the labour market properly—there will be holiday jobs, I know—until the age of 21, or, with postgraduate qualifications and training, perhaps closer to the age of 25. In other words, in a modern society and economy, people may take 25 years to get started, at enormous expense to different people, such as families and the state. I will not talk about education, but although arguments about tuition fees may seem distant from a discussion on pensions, in terms of how we understand life cycles, those two subjects seem closer intellectually than might be thought.

We have seen statistics on longevity. I thank the Minister and the Department for their useful background statistical documents. One page tells us that in 1926, women who survived to 65—many did not, of course, and I will talk about that in the modern era—lived a further 13 years. Recent evidence suggests that that average has increased to 24 years in the recent past. The Department, presenting new data from the Office for National Statistics, issued projections that revised that still further upwards to 28.7 years; that is for women. I hope that I have got the figures roughly right; the Minister will correct them if I am wrong, although they are his figures.

One of the interesting figures in the documents shows that longevity now means that women could spend 42% of their adult life at state pension age, many of them, but perhaps not all, retired. That is an extraordinary thought and in many respects, one could argue, a slightly scary one. It would certainly require us to be a little more robust about what we mean by the strange and old-fashioned word, “retirement”, but that goes a bit further.

Previous Conservative and Labour Governments accepted the demographic logic, the implications of longevity and life expectancy, and have legislated accordingly. In other words, the judgment was made that people will have to take their state pension at a later age and the nettle was grasped rightly to bring about equality between men and women because of the strangeness—although we can understand it historically—that women could have their state pension at the age of 60, while men had to wait until the age of 65 despite the fact that women live longer because they are stronger than men.

Both previous Governments planned for the long term, as many thoughtful individuals do. However, the nub of our critique is that the Bill is more about an interpretation and a response to deficit. I am not encouraging the hon. Member for Reading West to get to his feet; he made a good intervention, and I enjoyed it the first time. [Interruption.] Members of the Committee were not meant to laugh. In my judgment, the Bill is more a response to deficit and the crisis that we are undoubtedly in than sound, social policy planning and, as a consequence, it heaps a spectacular burden on the shoulders of the relatively few women—albeit up to half a million—who will be adversely affected.

After changes to other social policy measures such as child tax credits and child benefits, many people are entitled to ask whether the coalition has a problem with women because many of the severest cuts will fall on the necks and shoulders of women. I noted earlier that past reforms have met with little resistance or controversy. That is true, and if we compare the gradual planning of both Conservative and Labour Governments with the huge disturbances in Paris, for example, when pension changes were mooted, it is a tribute to those previous Governments that the long-term planning seemed fair to the public. There might have been the odd grumble here or there, but it did not create huge controversy. It was not about conflict. Indeed, it was more about consensus.

The Bill is undoubtedly different. It has brought conflict into the pension policy process because of new forms of injustice. There is a now a serious danger that that risks shaking and undermining public acceptance of the demographic challenge, and I would regret it if that turned out to be the case. I would also regret it if the Bill further undermined our support for the contributory principle in national insurance. It did not always work out well in practice because people paid in when they could because it was their duty, but they drew out as of right when they needed to, because that was their right, but if we start to undermine the principle in different ways, we will be in trouble.

I want to ask two questions, although I shall be careful not to say too much about such matters because both more than touch on the amendment that I shall discuss either today or Thursday, when I shall probably be talking more about men. However, I shall focus on women now and the danger of overgeneralising about longevity and life expectancy.

I have known for some years about the logic of longevity and life expectancy. There is no quarrel, but we get into difficulty when we assume that everyone, regardless of background, will live 20 or 30 years in retirement so they must all understand the nature of the challenge. I wanted to e-mail all members of the Committee a paper, but I do not know whether I did. With support from the Library, which had support from the Office for National Statistics, I looked at the likelihood of women dying before they reached the current state pension age of 60.

It is interesting to examine such results by social class. I must say that the social class of the husband was used methodologically in the process. The Library advised me that that was the best measure to go by, although distinguished social scientists might disagree. When we look at the figures, we see that 4% of women from the higher managerial and professional class—so-called “social class I”—die before the age of 60; for the next group, the lower managerial and professional class, the figure is 5%; and for intermediates, it is 5%. Women doing routine occupations—women in the poorest social class, if you like—tend to be manual workers. Many of them do the grottiest jobs in care homes, or are cleaners, and so on. When we look at those women from the routine social class, we see that fully 10% of them die before the age of 60. We can argue about the implications of that; I am bound to say that they are not obvious, although I will have a proposition on Thursday to put about them. Nevertheless, I hope that that figure will make us stop and think that this demographic trend is not so clear-cut and general as might be thought.

Of course, the other interesting thing is that when we look at people who reach state pension age—most people from all social classes do reach it—we again see, because of differentials in mortality through social class, that women and men from the poorest social class enjoy or experience fewer pension years than those in the professional class. I am focusing today on women, but the difference for both men and women is about four years.

My thesis would be, “Look, let’s be a bit careful about this”. Quite a few of those women in the poorest social class—we are talking about women today—die before they get their pension at 60, putting aside any consideration of wanting to push the pension age up still further. Of course, when women in the poorest social class get their pension, they generally get it for four fewer years than people in very different circumstances, who did not leave school at 14 or 15 and who did not do cleaning or manual work. Despite the stresses and strains of a Committee on a Tuesday afternoon, many people in the professions, such as ourselves, do not suffer the physical hardships that many manual jobs involve.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

The right hon. Gentleman is making an absolutely truthful statement that since we have had a state pension there have been differences in longevity between different socio-economic groups. Does he accept that longevity for all socio-economic groups is increasing?

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

Yes, I do. The Minister very helpfully—to truth, let alone his own case—presented some evidence on that. Of course, I recognise that that statement is true. Indeed, someone else could make a further point that surely health inequalities fall outside the range of pensions and we need to tackle those inequalities, and the Marmot review has just been published, which reminded me of the Black report of many years ago. I understand all that.

Nevertheless, I am trying to say to the Minister—although he has heard this argument from me once or twice in recent months—“Let’s just pause for thought about whether we have absolutely got this right as we move the state pension age up rather quickly for this group of women.” I do not know whether the Minister, perhaps with ONS’s help, has been able to establish whether the increase in state pension age that we now propose for women runs ahead, as it were, of increasing life expectancy, if he understands what I mean. At the moment, x% die before the age of 60; I have said that it is about 10% of the poorest. Could that percentage nudge up a bit, because of the things that we have been discussing? I do not know whether he has any figures on that. I genuinely do not know what the answer would be. It may be that things remain much the same.

This morning, the hon. Member for Arfon raised issues about location, which we discussed. It is worth putting some of this on the record further. I will read from my own paper, if that is allowed; one can plagiarise oneself, I think. This general social class difference is reflected in geographical differences. Considering drastic local variations in longevity, if we compare Kensington and Chelsea with Glasgow—the hon. Gentleman used this example himself—there is a difference of almost 10 years. That is for men, but there is of course a difference for women too. Across Sheffield, there is a difference of more than 14 years if we look at longevity. Even in Kensington and Chelsea—I alluded to this without the reference in front of me—which is, as he said, the borough with the highest life expectancy, there is a difference of eight years between the most and least deprived wards. As we represent different constituencies, and different social groups within our constituencies, my plea is to move away from generalisations and think whether a future policy which simply says that everyone has to reach a certain age before they get their state pension, might be insensitive to the way in which life cycles are being acted out.

The other point I wanted to raise, which has been touched upon by colleagues, is about employment. Various people have referred to the very good documentation we have had from the Department. Again, my plea would be: let us not generalise. Let us not assume that as we raise the state pension age—in this case for women—everyone will somehow be able to maintain their place in the labour market, keep their job, or, if they are not in a job already, readily be able to acquire a new job at the age of 60 or 61, 64 or 65. Common sense suggests that that is quite a proposition for the coalition Government to put forward. The figures I have—I may be repeating one given this morning—is that, looking at economic inactivity rates by age, by the age of 59 almost 40% of women are so-called economically inactive, for different reasons. In fact, it increases quite rapidly in the late 50s. You only have to go back to the age of 57 where the economic activity rate is only—and I say “only”, in inverted commas—26.7%. It suddenly shoots up in those last few years before the current state pension age.

As we proceed to raise the state pension age, quite rapidly for women, which is our main point, how confident is the Committee that, in our different constituencies, faced with these different occupational groups, jobs will be available for those women who want to work? Others have caring responsibilities, and I understand that, although many people, of course, combine work and care. Are we confident about the employment implications of this? I sometimes think that when people talk about this—not in this place, because I think we are more realistic, but some of the great commentators on this—it is assumed that out there is a world where everyone hitting 65 or 66 will develop some sort of portfolio of interests. There will be company directorships, and lectures, and books to write, and all these other things. Well, what is the equivalent for the lady who cleans our lavatories? What does her portfolio look like? Many of these people, because of their manual work, and because often they have been in the employment market since the age of 15 or 16, are actually worn out. Many of those who have written to me have talked about aching limbs and strained backs. In a very old-fashioned way, for these social groups, retirement is very important as a chance to have a rest and to relax after a lifetime of labour. I think we should be cautious before we readily assume that we can just keep on increasing the state pension age—in terms of this amendment, quite rapidly—for this group of women.

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat, Eastbourne)

I concur with many of the points the right hon. Gentleman makes; they are very valid and serious points. My question is that we are talking about, relatively speaking, a minimal difference. Exactly the same issues that the right hon. Gentleman is discussing would have applied to his Government when they were in power, where women who, as the right hon. Gentleman said, started work at 15 or 16, would be worn out, to coin a phrase. I am unsure what alternatives the previous Government brought forward, because they were following the same narrative.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

I certainly understand that, to be fair, the ugly spectre of social class variations by mortality has not suddenly appeared under this coalition Government. I am being fair-minded. All sorts of other evils have appeared, which we can discuss on another occasion. Of course, it has always been an issue, but it goes back to the point that I raised earlier—my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West put it better than I did—that past Governments have approached the problem rather cautiously and over a long term, so that individuals could plan and think through their future. The rush to judgment on increasing the state pension age for women is different from what preceded it, which is one difference. If and when I introduce my amendment later in the week—I am not 100% confident about it, because this is not easy stuff—I have some ideas about possible solutions to put to the Minister.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Good afternoon, Miss Clark. This morning, you missed a ripsnorter—as it is known in the trade—of a discussion on the important issue of the state pension age. That has been the focus of much attention, and it is proper that it is the first clause of the Bill. I want to respond to the points made by every Opposition Member, except by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead, who I think will speak on the next group of amendments.

It is interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Croydon North. I have indeed read his paper, which I commend to Committee members—if they do not have a copy, I will sell them one. In the paragraph headed “Policy implications”, he condemns

“macho commentators, from privileged backgrounds, who recommend higher and higher pension ages”.

I am sure that he does not mean the Secretary of State or me—I might take some pride in it—but it is not an entirely accurate description of the Government’s approach. However, from the speech that the right hon. Member for Croydon North has just given and most others, one could be forgiven for thinking that amendment 16 and the others in the group would not raise the state pension age to 66; of course, they would. In response to an intervention, the hon. Member for Leeds West went further and said that the current legislative timetable for moving to 67 and 68 is too pedestrian. [Interruption.] I think she did. She also said that that move should probably be faster to pay for the effect of the amendments.

All the points made by the right hon. Member for Croydon North and other Members about people feeling worn out in their late 50s and struggling to find jobs in their 60s will be true whenever we move to a pension age of 66, 67 and 68. Nothing in the group of amendments would address the points that have been raised; they would still be true, but true just a few years later. I will come on to the question of notice, but I thought it was important to make the point that the general trend to longer life expectancy and later state pension ages will raise precisely the issues referred to by Opposition Members, which are not remotely dealt with in the amendments. It is important to put on the record that the amendments would raise precisely the same issues.

I was struck during the debate by the fact that Opposition Members are asking the single figure of the state pension age to do a huge number of different jobs. It is meant to tackle local labour market difficulties in Wales and the fact that some working-class men—and women, for that matter—leave school at 16 and have amassed 49 years of contributions by the pension age. It is being asked to address differences in healthy life expectancy and differences between regions. One number cannot do all that work. The issues raised are perfectly proper, but the idea that we should respond to them through the state pension age is where the logic goes wrong.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

I am a little confused by what the Minister is saying. I did not hear what he heard. My colleagues argued that, although we may be living longer—that, too, is not a single fact, because there are mitigating circumstances for different types of people—it is not only that the pension age is moving, but that people are different and need different ways of planning for future changes. They have already planned for one set of changes, and they need more time to plan for the next. What I heard was that we cannot just say that people are living longer, which is a fact or statement that is being made to fit all circumstances. I think the Minister perhaps misunderstood what was said.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I know that the hon. Lady missed the first half hour of the sitting this morning for the entirely proper reason that she had a debate in Westminster Hall, but it does mean that she missed the exchanges I was talking about. Perhaps, before accusing me of misunderstanding something she did not hear, she will think again.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

I apologise.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The right hon. Gentleman made some general remarks about the danger of generalisations, and I agree with him on that. We need to look at specific individuals and at the real human beings behind the statistics. We heard some individual case studies, and I was struck by some of them, but exactly the same arguments would be used under amendment 16, only in a few years’ time. We would have exactly the same conversation about the long and hard-working life. I might even have met the lady whose testimony the hon. Member for Leeds West read out, because we had a Fabian Women’s event in Parliament and I think the lady told her story. Under the proposed amendments, folk who have difficulty working in their late 50s and so on will face precisely the same set of issues in a few years’ time, so I am not sure how the amendments will make the problem any easier.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The woman the Minister met was Kathryn Greaves, the stories I have given were those of Barbara Bates and Linda Murray.

The amendments deal with two issues that the Bill does not. First, those women have already had their state pension age moved once, under the changes in 1995; the goalposts are now being moved for a second time. Also, both Barbara and Linda, as well as other women, say that it is impossible. Linda made it particularly clear in her testimony: she earns only £270 a week, and it would be impossible for her to save anything like what is necessary for her to be able to make the adjustments that she wanted to given the impact that her job is having on her health. In two important ways, therefore, the amendments deal with the concerns of the women.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am slightly confused. The hon. Lady seems to be critical of us for moving the state pension age “for a second time”, but any woman who reaches state pension age after 2022 has already had her state pension age raised to 65 and would now find it raised to 66 by the hon. Lady’s amendments. The amendments would raise the state pension age twice.

There is clearly an issue to do with people having time to save. The hon. Lady is fond of quoting the fact that many women in their late 50s, after 13 years of a Labour Government, have not got much in savings. How will that change dramatically because of her proposed delay of a couple of years? If they got to their late 50s with minimal savings, putting the date back by a couple of years might help a little, but will not make a radical difference to their ability to put right a system that has worked against them over their whole lives, as we have heard from many hon. Members. That is why we are proud to press ahead next year with auto-enrolment into workplace pensions, which we will come on to later in the Bill.

The second reason for dealing with the problem, which no Opposition Member has mentioned at all, is not only the pension age but what people get at the pension age. I hope to be present in future, perhaps with the same cast, to address the question of what sort of pension that specific group of women who perhaps retire in a decade or so should expect. My firm conviction is that the state pension system presided over by the previous Government is not adequate for those women; we have time to change it, although we need to move quickly, to a system that is far fairer precisely for those women who spent time out of the labour market bringing up children. We have heard a lot about their needs, and we have a Green Paper that proposes solutions very much benefiting exactly that group of women. I will go no further down that avenue, but it provides an important context for our debate.

One of the key contexts for the amendments is the fiscal climate. The position of the Opposition party seems to be that its amendments would leave us £10 billion down on the Bill. When asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West where that £10 billion would come from, the answer as far as I understood it was from the taxpayers and firms of 2035—that is when the money would come in from moving to 67 earlier. I think that even 68 was mentioned, so it would be the taxpayers of 2045 as well. As one of my hon. Friends said, that is the children and grandchildren of the very women we are talking about. The silent voices in the room are the next generation of taxpayers. The hon. Member for Arfon said that he had only had a small number of letters, and perhaps some women affected did not write in, but the other people who did not write in were those who do not know about the £10 billion that they are about to be asked to pay in decades to come, because the Labour party leaflet possibly did not mention that bit. That is the flip side: if we are going to spend £10 billion on this group of amendments, someone has to pay for it.

It has been pointed out that the change is not in the current comprehensive spending review. Pensions reform has a knack of not being in the current CSR, but it is still essential to think about the fiscal context. My hon. Friend for Grantham and Stamford put it very well when he said, if we are taking about such vast sums of money, we have to look at what bang for our buck we are getting, and not just at an aggregate level. We know how many people are affected, but how many people are so adversely affected that we need to spend £10 billion putting it right? I thought that was absolutely pertinent to our discussions.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that it is fair that 500,000 women are so disproportionately affected by the changes? Even if the Government want to save the full £30 billion, does the Minister think it right that one group of women should have to pay the highest price for it?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The question of why more women than men are affected is important, and the answer is that we are treating men and women equally sooner. An inevitable consequence of treating men and women the same more quickly is that it will be women who lose in the process when we level-up state pension ages. As we may go on to discuss, moving men first would breach our duties under equality legislation, because it increases the gap between men and women. If the hon. Lady had another hat on, she would be urging us to close the gap between men and women. That is what we are doing, and that is why more women than men are affected.

I have to say to the Committee that I have been uncharacteristically generous to Labour Members on their amendment; I suggested that it would cost the Exchequer only £10 billion, but I am guilty of understating the case. As is the way of Departments, we have a slight tendency to think only about our bit. The Department for Work and Pensions would indeed have to find another £10 billion of public expenditure, but there is another £2.5 billion of income tax and national insurance that the Exchequer would not get if the change was not made. Those figures are in the impact assessment before the Committee. We are, in fact, therefore talking about £12.5 billion that would have to be found.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

Presumably the figures on income tax and so forth are predicated on all the women in question being in employment during the period.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

They are predicated on realistic assumptions of the proportion of those women who will be working. The right hon. Member for Croydon North, my predecessor but six, would agree with me that the well-established macro-economic evidence is that if we can get people working longer—raising the state pension age is part of that, although it is not quite the same thing—we benefit the macro-economy as a whole, and get enhanced income tax and national insurance revenues. That is what we risk losing if we delay. It is a case of “Make me chaste, but not yet”; we all agree that we are living longer, but we do not want to do anything about it for another decade. If we stick to the timetable in amendment 16, men’s state pension age in 2020 will be roughly what it was a century earlier. That does not feel to me like undue haste.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

On page 35 of the impact assessment, in the table headed “Description and scale of key monetised costs by ‘main affected groups’”, below

“Reduced DWP spending on pensions”,

it says:

“Increased income tax and National Insurance receipts £12,700 million.”

I am surprised that the Minister now says that the national insurance and income tax impacts have not been taken into account in the impact assessment that was published.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

We published the figures in the impact assessment, and published two sorts of impacts: first, the annually managed expenditure impacts, which are the £30 billion and £20 billion numbers, and then the income tax and national insurance impacts, which go from about £8 billion to £5 billion and a bit, if I remember rightly. That is all published in the impact assessment; if the hon. Lady leafs through it a bit further, she will find those numbers.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

To be fair, the hon. Gentleman has always had a reputation in social policy for concern about greater equality and social justice. When he looks at these very large figures of billions of pounds of revenue, the causes of the deficit, and the different groups in our society—including the top 2% who are now doing terribly well, in terms of increases in their income and wealth—is he satisfied, as a man concerned with fairness, that this is the place to put billions of pounds-worth of burden? He must have a conscience about this.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford said, “Let’s take this group and examine who they are and what their characteristics are.” The first thing we established is that roughly seven out of 10 women in their late 50s—the group most affected—are in paid employment at the moment. It was suggested that many are carers, and I take the point made by the right hon. Member for Croydon North that people combine caring with paid work. Just 3% of that group are on carer’s allowance. If they cannot get by on carer’s allowance and whatever else is coming into the household, that is a problem when they are 57, not only when they are 64. If they cannot get by on what they have coming in now and it is not sustainable, that should worry us today, and we should do something about that today. Even if amendment 16 is accepted, they will still have to live on that standard of living for seven years. If that is totally unsustainable, then we should do something about that. Delaying putting up state pension ages because of that does not seem to follow logically.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

There are two key points here. One of the points that Age UK makes in its analysis is that a lot of women start to draw on their savings, whether that is because they are taking on caring responsibilities, going part-time for another reason, or find the physical stress of work too difficult for them to carry on. They make those decisions based on their savings, so they are able to maintain a decent standard of living. However, carrying on for another two years, which is what the Bill asks 33,000 women to do, would be beyond their financial means. Many women who will be affected have said to me that they have never claimed benefits in their life and will continue to work as long as they have to, even if the physical demand takes an enormous toll. They might not claim sickness benefits, but carry on under extreme physical strain, and the Government are asking them to do that for another two years.

Regarding national insurance, pages 35 and 37 of the impact assessment state that the figure is £12.7 million under option one and £8.8 million under option two. I am surprised that the Minister says that that was not included.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The hon. Lady is referring to the White Paper. With the Bill, we have published a revised impact assessment, which she will find on page 11 of the Bill’s impact assessment. The Treasury revised its estimates of the income tax and national insurance impact, which is why the numbers are different.

The hon. Lady is right that a set of people, particularly women, might have no choice and might, perhaps because of family circumstances, find themselves with a caring responsibility in their late 50s. If that is a difficult situation for them, which I am sure it is, that will still happen regardless of amendment 16 and related amendments. There will still be, in a few years’ time, women in their late 50s who find that they have caring responsibilities and that they run down their modest savings in the run-up to a pension age of 66, which she supports. Indeed, she has tabled amendments to introduce the age of 66.

There is an inconsistency here. I accept that there is an issue about notice, but she is not talking about notice. People in their late 50s who have been forced into caring responsibilities unexpectedly do not make carefully calculated choices and nuanced decisions about it; it just happens to them. That will go on happening generation after generation, and that problem has to be dealt with by giving proper support to carers, not by changing the state pension age later. The hon. Lady’s amendments would introduce the age of 66, and therefore bring forward the number of women who face the exact difficulty that she has just described. She cannot suggest that there is a substantive difference—apart from in the issue of notice, which I will return to—between her amendments and what the Bill says; the situation would apply in both cases.

Returning to the fiscal context, we have heard the comment that the issue is a long way off, and that it does not matter from the point of view of the deficit. I think we even heard that the days of tackling the deficit will be over, and that the deficit will be some sort of history. What will not be history is the interest burden of the nearly £1.4 trillion of national debt that we will face at the end of this Parliament, despite the difficult decisions that we have had to make. The children and grandchildren of those women will be paying that interest for generations to come. A person who glibly says, “We need another £10 billion, but we will find it in the 2030s” or something like that does not seem to be living in the real world. There is always a case for looking at the impact on particular groups, which we will do, but simply to say, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” was the hallmark of the previous Administration, who got us into the situation in the first place.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East asked about the role of employment and support allowance in supporting people in their late 50s and beyond who are no longer able to work because of sickness. She referred to the 12-month limit under the Welfare Reform Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford said, it is worth breaking that group down. Nearly a quarter of ESA recipients over 55 are in the support group, so they are not affected by the issue raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East. Nearly half of those who start claiming ESA over the age of 55 come off it within a year, so that is pretty typical for people. The majority of ESA claimants over 55 are men, in any case. When we start to narrow it down, the number of women who would otherwise have been on contributory ESA, who would not be in the support group or receiving income-related benefits, and would be on ESA for more than a year would be small. I am not saying that no one would be affected, but we should consider the matter relative to a £10 billion amendment; it is important to keep a certain sense of perspective.

The hon. Member for Arfon asked about the impact on Wales. I assure him that we took close cognisance of that. When we published our call for evidence, we highlighted in the document the improvement of life expectancy in Wales from 84.8 years under the 2004 projections to 86 years in the 2008 projections. One of the questions that we asked was what evidence concerning changes in life expectancy should be taken into account. In the impact assessment that we published with the Bill, which I am sure he will have seen, we gave on page 16 separate figures for life expectancy at state pension age in England, Wales and Scotland, under the different scenarios.

We have been very much aware that the policies will have a different impact on different nations of the United Kingdom, and as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, from community to community. I was interested in the example that he gave of the Welsh Assembly Government looking at ward-by-ward measures, and it was good to hear some constructive ideas. I do not consider that issues about state pension age are best addressed on a ward-by-ward basis, but I am grateful to him for his constructive suggestion, and for his candour in saying that it is easier to point out the differences than to work out, under a national social security policy, what to do about them; he was fair in his remarks.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun referred to the availability of jobs. One of the interesting things about the recent recession is that the market for older workers has held up the best. In fact, the market for workers over the age of 60 has had a positive growth, relative to negative growth for younger workers. That is not glibly dismissing the issues facing older workers, but the evidence shows that it is the growth area in the jobs market. Jobs are often part-time, and a part-time job could well pay the equivalent of the basic state pension, for example, so those jobs are relevant to that group. She raised an important point.

The hon. Member for Nottingham South talked about her constituents who faced 15-month increases, and was worried about the impact on women who do the right thing. She cited women who leave school, work a full working life and then face a pension age of 66. In four years’ time, when her policy would come in of bringing the age of 66 forward by four years to 2022, there will also be women who do the right thing. Why would the issue of women who do the right thing not be equally applicable under the amendment that she is asking the Committee to support? I think that it would.

The hon. Lady raised a particular issue about local government workers, many of whom will, as she says, have a decent occupational pension, which will assist with later state pension ages. However, again, if there is an issue about how the local government pension scheme and re-grading in local government affects people’s pension choices, that is something to fix within the context of the local government pension scheme and local government, rather than by delaying state pension age changes. That would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I now come to a couple of other issues; I want to make sure that I have responded in full to the debate. I was asked about transition, which is obviously a key issue. I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said on Second Reading that he stood by the principles of the Bill, such as faster equalisation and a faster move to 66, but that he heard the specific worry expressed by several Opposition Members, as well as some Government Members, who have been commendably restrained, but have properly raised their constituents’ worries with me in writing, for which I am grateful.

There was a specific concern about a relatively small number of women; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirmed that we are willing to get the transition right. I have been asked, “Well, where’s the amendment?” This is a classic case of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” The Bill had its Second Reading a fortnight ago, at which time we voiced our willingness to consider transition. If we then scuttled away and presented our transitional amendments to the Committee, the Committee would have said, “Where was the consultation? Where was the discussion? Where was the listening?” Instead, we have come to the Committee and, given the process we have, Opposition Members had the chance to come forward with fresh new thinking on transition. What do we have in front of us? The amendment that they tabled in the House of Lords, which has already been rejected.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The Minister knows that I wrote to him on 22 June asking whether we could discuss this and work together on it. He did not even have the courtesy to reply to that letter. We wanted to build on the Turner consensus, which built consensus across business, unions and all parts of the House. The Government can decide to unravel that consensus, that is their choice, but I offered that opportunity, and I want the Minister to acknowledge that.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I have indeed received the hon. Lady’s letter and she will receive a reply. She wrote a couple of weeks ago, saying that she wanted to help us with transition. I look forward to the ideas and fresh thinking that I assumed she would bring to the Committee. That is what the Committee is for. This part of the process is for the Opposition to say what they think should be done, to table amendments and to bring forward fresh thinking. We have had some fresh thinking from her right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North, which we will debate later. We have had some helpful probing amendments from her hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead, who suggested some other alternatives that have not been done to death. I hoped that the Labour Front Bench would come to the Committee with some fresh thinking of that sort. We have had the same old arguments, the same debate and the same amendments. I am happy to talk to anyone who will give us fresh thinking on transition. We have plenty of ideas and we want to get this right.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

The Minister will have to concede that our position has been clear from the outset, as it was on Second Reading, on where we stood on accelerating this. It was the Government’s proposal that the problems might be alleviated through transitional proposals. Is it not therefore up to the Government to come forward with some proposal that we could discuss, rather than throwing it back and suggesting that we should be doing the Government’s job?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am not sure if the hon. Lady speaks for her Front-Bench spokespeople when she says that, because they are saying that they have lots of ideas that they want to share with us. Either they have not got any ideas, or they have got ideas and just have not told us what they are yet. This is the forum for telling us.

Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)

I thank the Minister for indicating that the Government are thinking about transitional arrangements. I look forward, with all hon. Members, to finding out exactly what they are. I want to come back to this point: when the hon. Member for Leeds West wrote to the Minister, one would have expected her to put forward some proposals of her own and to bring some to the Committee today. That has not happened. She cannot have it both ways. I am delighted that the Government are thinking along these lines.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I remain open to constructive suggestions on transition. The hon. Member for Leeds West told the Daily Mirror that she was disappointed when she saw when the amendment paper, but she was not half as disappointed as I was, when I saw the lack of fresh thinking from her.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The Opposition Front Bench team has proposed two amendments. One is around the pension credit to help the poorest people affected by these changes. As the Minister knows, the gap between the Government’s proposals and our proposals is a lot less than £10 billion. There are also two amendments tabled by Labour Back Benchers, with nothing from Government Members.

Following up on the Secretary of State, who said he would happily discuss transitional arrangements with anyone who wanted to do so, I set out in my letter to the Minister on 22 June that I would like to do so, but I was not given a meeting with the Minister. In the final paragraph of my letter I said:

“It is important that we resolve this confusion during the Committee Stage of the Bill. We are willing to work with you. I would be grateful, therefore, if you could share with me the proposals that you are working on.”

The Minister has said that he did not want to rush something to bring it to Committee, so at what stage will he bring something back, and who will he be consulting with?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The hon. Lady says that she referred, in her letter, to confusion—as indeed she did—and I was confused about what she was confused about. We had made it clear that we stood by the principles of the Bill, but that we recognised that, particularly for the most affected group, we would need to look at the transitional situation. We look forward to anyone, frankly, who wants to feed into that process, and who has specific propositions on that transition. The hon. Lady mentioned the pension credit amendment which, if I recall correctly, was also tabled by her hon. Friends in the Lords and was rejected. We are very happy to hear from anyone who has any fresh thinking on these ideas.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

On Second Reading, the Pensions Minister said that he was willing to work to get the transition right, which I presumed meant that he thought that at the moment they had not got the transition right, and in fact had it wrong. If that was the case, I presumed that they would be willing to talk to us, and when I asked to have a meeting, that that offer would be taken up.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I get the feeling of dancing on pin heads, here. I repeat what I said, and what my right hon. Friend said at Second Reading: we hear the specific concern about a particular, relatively small number of women, and we will consider it, and are willing to work to get the transition right. That remains our position. What I will not do is start off a whole range of speculation. As soon as I say, “We could look at this, we could do that,” then all sorts of hares get set running. A set of people hear a newspaper story that says, “Government set to do X,” and their hopes are raised, and then we do not do that, and they are disappointed. Given the uncertainty that is inevitable when something is going through Parliament, it is important that we look at the debate in this Committee. That is the point of this process: to refine legislation and get it right. That is why we welcome—I vaguely think we are meeting now, for many hours—any fresh thinking.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

The Minister says he does not want to start hares running, so in a way he has answered the question I was going to raise. When I think of the Liberal Democrats—in my better moments, over recent years—it has been a party, and not least the hon. Gentleman, which has been committed to freedom of information, a more open politics, with the Executive of which he is now a distinguished member treating the legislature with greater respect than, perhaps, under previous Governments. Given all of that, would it not have been sensible if the work going on in the Department, which I suspect preceded Second Reading debate on transitional arrangements, could be published as a kind of Green Paper so we could have a more well-informed debate? He would have supported this a little while ago.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I do not think anyone would thank me for a Green Paper in the middle of a Bill that has already been through the House of Lords. I really do not think that is going to help us.

Cathy Jamieson (Labour, Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

To press a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West has made, if there has been no opportunity for the Opposition Front-Bench spokespersons to meet to discuss this, and nothing has been brought forward by the Government into Committee, how are we to get any sense, or any flavour, of the types of amendments that the Government propose? I find myself quite bemused to know how we are going to scrutinise something in the absence of any information.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could not have been clearer on Second Reading when he said that he was aware of the issues facing a specific group, and wanted to ease the transition. Obviously, there are a variety of ways in which that could be tackled. As I say, I am keen that we get it right, and anything that involves primary legislation will have to be brought before the House. I think hon. Members have been here long enough to know that there are further stages that this Bill has to go through, so anything that requires primary legislation will go before the House and be properly scrutinised in the normal way.

Amber Rudd (Conservative, Hastings and Rye)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition do not have a monopoly on proposals for transitional agreements? I know that several Government Members here have made proposals, despite comments from an hon. Member here about school prefects. I hope that he will give careful consideration to those, so that the best proposals can come forward.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

My hon. Friend is quite right, and a number of hon. Members who have written in, including herself, have not simply said, “There is a problem here,” which is a slight shade of what we heard this morning, but: “Why don’t you do this?” There have been various very practical, constructive suggestions, which are welcomed at this particularly critical phase.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

It might have been appropriate to have had a pause, in order to bring forward proposals.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Amendment 16 is a 10-year pause, if I understand it correctly.

Marcus Jones (Conservative, Nuneaton)

The Minister may be aware that I have written to him on the very subject of transitional arrangements, advocating that the Government consider putting transitional arrangements in place for women who are in this particular cohort and may be disadvantaged by the changes. Regardless of that, would the Minister not agree that Government must look at this very carefully and take their time to make sure that they get the proposals right in the interests of both the cohort of women who may be disadvantaged and the wider interests of the taxpayer?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for inserting the interests of the taxpayer into the debate. Women in their 50s are taxpayers too, but we have to think of the taxpayers of today and tomorrow and the trade-offs involved. It is important that he highlights that context. I remind the House that we had Second Reading on 22 June and amendments had to be tabled for today. As Mr Brady reminded us at the start, they were tabled last Thursday, so within about 10 days of Second Reading, we suddenly have to produce finely honed legislation. Doing those things in a rush is not right, but clearly, there will be proper parliamentary scrutiny of anything that requires primary legislation.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

I simply suggest that the timetable for Committee is within the Government’s powers. If more time was required, perhaps it would have been appropriate to have a pause before we moved to Committee Stage.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The hon. Lady will know that we have five whole days in Committee and all the time that is needed to consider all the Opposition amendments has been allocated. I do not think that any Opposition amendment that has been tabled will not get a proper chance to be discussed—there are just not very many and we have had most of them before.

I think that we have pretty much exhausted the issue.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The Minister said previously that he was willing to talk to people who had other suggestions. Is he having conversations with other groups? If so, who are they? Also, does he agree that it is usually sensible to take time to get it right before a Bill is published rather than scrabbling around afterwards to try to find the right answers?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Once again we are in “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” territory. If you publish a Bill and regard it as holy writ, immutable, unamendable and perfect from birth, you are regarded as arrogant and unlistening, and if you amend it, you are scrabbling round in the dust for amendments, whichever takes your fancy.

I meet organisations to which tribute has quite properly been paid—Age UK, Ros Altmann at Saga, and many others—regularly. It will not surprise the Committee to know that those issues have come up from time to time and we have benefited from their insight. The invitation remains open for the Opposition to make specific, costed proposals for transition that they believe would address the issues. I would be very happy to look at them.

Let me try to draw the threads together because I am aware that a whole range of other debates is closely linked to this one. The fundamental point is that, since the 2007 Act was published, based on 2004 projections, life expectancy has improved not just a bit, but like an express train. In four years, between 2004 and 2008, roughly a year and a half was added to life expectancy at pension age. The bill attached to that is tens of billions of pounds. The question is, who pays it? Does it all fall on the next generation of national insurance payers, taxpayers, and interest on debt payers or does some of it fall upon those who will benefit from the increased longevity?

The hon. Member for Leeds, West said that we are moving up pension ages faster than the improvement in life expectancy. I remind her that in 1990 when the pension age was 60, the average woman reaching pension age—I forget the exact figure—could expect to get a pension for a certain number of years and by 2020, that figure was exactly the same even with a six-year increase in state pension age. In other words, precisely over that period, the number of years for which a woman could expect to receive a state pension in 30 years, despite a six-year increase in the state pension age, has not changed. Again, this does not suggest breakneck speed, disproportionate impact.

Clearly there are trade-offs and we have aired them quite extensively in Committee. I simply say that we are mindful of the very specific group and the very specific issues that my hon. Friends and Opposition Members have raised. We will work to get that transition right, but I resolutely stand by the principle of grasping those difficult issues today rather than putting them off till tomorrow for someone else to tackle. Therefore, I urge the Committee to reject the amendments.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

It is good to serve under you in the Chair this afternoon, Miss Clark. I thank hon. Members for their speeches, their questions about the amendment, and for the debate this morning and this afternoon. The purpose of the group of amendments should be clear: collectively, they seek to amend the Bill’s acceleration of the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women and ensure that there is no rise to 66 before 2020, as in the coalition agreement, but allow for a faster increase to 66 between 2020 and 2022.

A petition has been signed by more than 12,000 people, and an early-day motion, calling for precisely the same changes, has been signed by 180 Members, including the hon. Members for Colchester (Bob Russell), for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George), for Torbay (Mr Sanders), for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward), the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the hon. Members for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) and for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), the hon. Members for Wells (Tessa Munt), for Southport (John Pugh), for Solihull (Lorely Burt), for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for St Albans (Mrs Main)—in other words, Government Members as well as Opposition Members.

It is important to state exactly what the early-day motion says, which is:

“That this House welcomes the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women, but notes with concern the Government’s proposals to accelerate the timetable for doing so; recognises that 300,000 women born between December 1953 and October 1954 will have to work an additional 18 months or more of which 33,000 will have to work an extra two years; further recognises that these women have less than the 15 years of preparation time recommended by the Turner Commission before the changes take place; and calls on the Government to take these issues into account and revise the timetable in order to maintain the commitment given in the Coalition Agreement.”

I read out the early-day motion because the group of amendments would do exactly that.

The early-day motion was also signed by the hon. Member for Eastbourne, so I look forward to receiving his support when we vote on the amendment later this afternoon.

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat, Eastbourne)

I thank the hon. Lady for reminding me of that, which I really appreciate. I return to what I asked several Opposition Members this morning: does she agree that the Secretary of State made a commitment to transition arrangements, or is she saying that he is not telling the truth?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are discussing transition arrangements. The early-day motion that he signed and the plans we are discussing today relate to the transition to 66, but at a slower rate to give people more preparation time. He supported that when he signed the early-day motion, and I expect that he told his constituents that he supported it, so for consistency he should support the amendment this afternoon.

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat, Eastbourne)

That is why I look forward with—I would even say—excitement to the Secretary of State’s transition arrangements, which I am told will come out in the very near future.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The hon. Gentleman may well have been told that, but it is the first I have heard of their coming out in the very near future. I hope that he is right, and that they will appear before the end of Committee stage so that we can scrutinise them, which I thought was the purpose of a Bill Committee. If the Government have ideas, the Committee is the perfect place to debate them. However, on consistency grounds, I find it strange that the hon. Gentleman would support an early-day motion but vote against an amendment that would do precisely what is in the early-day motion.

On Second Reading, just two weeks ago, hon. Members of all parties spoke passionately about the need to address exactly that issue—it is a shame that more of them are not here today—and the need to find a better and fairer way that does not fall so disproportionately on one group of women. I remind the Committee of what was said on Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) asked:

“Is it not clear to the Secretary of State and the Government that although everyone accepts that there have to be changes, some of the proposals in the Bill are, for 500,000 women, unfair and unjustified?”

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said that

“we need to know very early in the debate whether that group of women will be fairly treated and whether the Government will think again, because those of us who feel positive about many of the reforms would find that a sticking point.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 42.]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) said that the Bill will cause

“certain loss for many thousands of women facing retirement.”

He asked the Secretary of State to

“sketch out a little more how he intends to give them security”.—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 44.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) asked:

“Which of the facts that the Secretary of State has cited was he unaware of 12 and a half months ago, when in the coalition agreement the Government signed up to not introducing these changes before 2020?”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 48.]

That point was touched on early in today’s debate.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said:

“No one can object to the equalisation of pension ages for men and women when we are fighting so hard for other areas of equality. However, does he”—

the Secretary of State—

“recognise that for a particular group of some 300,000 women born in 1954 the transition arrangements are rather more difficult than for any other group in society? Although he should not change his policy, will he look at other ways to help that particular group of women?”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 49.]

The hon. Member for North Wiltshire asked the Secretary of State:

“Will he give particular consideration to the small group of 33,000 women born in March 1954, on whom the change will bear down disproportionately harshly? Surely there is a way of finding a transition method that takes account of that small group of women.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) asked the Secretary of State:

“My constituents, the class that left Foxhills comprehensive school in 1970, who were all born in 1953-54, have written to me to ask why the pensions goalposts should be moved twice so close to their retirement. What would he say to those women?”

The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said:

“I think there is general acceptance that with increased longevity, the pension age needs to be considered, including the current unfair differentiation between men and women. However, there is a particular group of women who will be badly affected. I welcome the Secretary of State’s saying that he will consider transitional arrangements. Is he willing to consider with an open mind amendments in Committee and on Report, or other solutions that might be brought forward, to help that particular group of women?” —[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 51-52.]

The hon. Member for—

Katy Clark (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran)

Order. The hon. Lady has cited a number of Members who have made the points that she is referring to. The purpose of the Committee is not to regurgitate the Second Reading debate but to focus on the clause that is before us. Perhaps she could do that—I think that she has made her point.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The point that I am trying to make is that on Second Reading Members asked time and time again if the Government would consider the impact on this group of women. The Secretary of State said that they would and I think that many Members, including the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) who made the case very forcefully on Second Reading, expected that these transition arrangements that the Government said they were looking at and were willing to discuss would be introduced in Committee. The disappointment felt by the Opposition and, I believe, across the House, reflects the fact that despite giving a commitment on Second Reading that transition arrangements would be considered, we are not being given the chance to scrutinise them. Those transition arrangements relate to the part of the Bill that was probably debated most on Second Reading. The hon. Member for Eastbourne says that he thinks they are forthcoming and the Minister says that the Government are looking at them. Yet in the very forum in which they should be debated—this Committee—we do not have any such amendments to consider, even though we are being asked to scrutinise a Bill that may or may not impact this group of 500,000 women in the way that it currently does. If transition arrangements are made for those 500,000 women, or those 33,000 women, perhaps we will be in a different place. Frankly, we do not know that, because the Government are not sharing the information about what those transition arrangements will look like.

As well as Age UK and Saga, external organisations such as the National Association of Pension Funds have also called for the Government to rethink. The NAPF has said:

“This is unfair as women have too little time to plan for these changes. MPs from all side of the house have expressed their concerns on this issue. The NAPF urges the Government to re-consider the situation for this group of women during the Committee Stages of the Bill and come forward with detailed proposals on transitional arrangements to the State Pension Age.”

The NAPF goes on to make a series of recommendations: no changes until 2020; the increase to 66 should occur for both men and women from 2020 to 2022; and the Government need to do more to help people to work for longer.

The NAPF’s recommendations are particularly germane to this debate today because the NAPF says that it would expect the transition plans to come in

“the Committee Stages of the Bill”

and that it would expect the Government to introduce those proposals. That is what many Members in the House expected when they urged the Secretary of State to think about the impact on the 33,000 women whom we have mentioned and the 500,000 women who will have to wait for more than a year longer than they had thought for their pension.

An awful lot of pressure from inside the House—indeed, from all parts of the House—and from outside the House has been brought to bear. So I was pleased that the Secretary of State acknowledged this issue and repeatedly informed the House that he would be happy to discuss the transitional arrangements.

As with the Turner report, I still believe that the best way to go about these things is by achieving consensus. As I said to the Minister during his contribution, I wrote to him, asking him to share with me the proposal that he was working on, in order that we could scrutinise the arrangements. That is what the previous Government did when they put forward proposals for increasing the state pension age. We managed to build cross-party consensus for those changes, both inside and outside the House. It is a shame that the Government have deviated from that approach to pensions policy and it is one that will negatively affect those people, both in retirement and approaching retirement.

It is disappointing that no proposals were forthcoming and a further blow that we have heard nothing of their plans today. Will the Minister explain the confusion? Why did he and the Secretary of State say that transitional arrangements would be looked at, yet nothing is on the table before us today? As the postbags and e-mail accounts of the Members of this Committee and Members from across the House will no doubt attest, this is an issue that has real impact in all of our constituencies.

In my constituency, almost 1,000 women will be affected by these changes by more than a year. How will Government Members, such as the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, who has 1,300 women affected in her constituency, explain that she has not put forward transitional arrangements or supported the ones that are on the table. The hon. Member for High Peak has 1,200 women aged 56 and 57 in his constituency. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford has 1,300 women aged 56 and 57. In Nuneaton, there are 1,100 women; Eastbourne 1,200; South Basildon and East Thurrock 1,300; Hastings and Rye 1,400; South West Bedfordshire 1,200; Reading West 1,000; Norwich North 1,000; Thornbury and Yate 1,100; and Arfon 600—the Member with the fewest women in his constituency aged 56 and 57 seems to care more about them than those with perhaps twice as many women of those ages in their constituencies.

All of those women would have been reassured and comforted by what the Secretary of State and the Pensions Minister said during Second Reading, which acknowledged the unfairness of their situation and spoke of the possibility of transitional arrangements that would seek to address that. I know from letters and e-mails to me, that people have said that it looked like the Government were willing to make concessions, perhaps do a U-turn as they have in other areas of policies. Yet no such transitional proposals have been presented by the Government.

This Committee could have had a fruitful discussion of the transitional arrangements, yet the Government have failed to come forward with options, as women in all our constituencies and the National Association of Pension Funds, Saga and Age UK would have liked them to have done. Instead we have had no actions and empty words. It is only the Opposition and Opposition Back Benchers who have tabled amendments with regard to the state pension age. We have set out—as I did on Second Reading—that any proposals must give women and men time to plan. They should impact on men and women equally and no one should have to wait more than a year before they get their state pension.

We recognise that the state pension age needs to increase and I believe that the amendments grouped together here would ease the transition, but still get to 66 earlier than under the previous timetable, to reflect increasing longevity. Ministers say they wanted to investigate: we could have an investigation and discussion in this Committee. Instead, we have only Opposition amendments, but I hope today that the hon. Member for Eastbourne and all hon. Members will support this group of amendments.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 1, page 1, leave out from line 11 to end of line 4 on page 2 and insert—

‘06 April - 5 May 1953

06 June 2016

06 May 1953

06 September 2016

06 June 1953

06 December 2016

06 July 1953

06 March 2017

06 August 1953

06 June 2017

06 September 1953

06 September 2017

06 October 1953

06 December 2017

06 November 1953

06 March 2018’.

Katy Clark (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment 25, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 10 to 16 and insert—

‘06 December 1953

06 June 2018

06 January 1954

06 September 2018

06 February 1954

06 December 2018

06 March 1954

06 March 2019

06 April 1954

06 April 2019

06 May 1954

06 June 2019

06 June 1954

06 August 2019

06 July 1954

06 October 2019

06 August 1954

06 December 2019

06 September 1954

06 February 2020

06 October 1954

06 April 2020

06 November 1954

06 June 2020

06 December 1954

06 August 2020

06 January 1955

06 October 2020

06 February 1955

06 December 2020

06 March 1955

06 February 2021

06 April 1955

06 April 2021’.

Amendment 26, in clause 1, page 2, line 17, leave out ‘1954’ and insert ‘1955’.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

During the debate on Second Reading, Members in all parts of the House expressed concern about how their constituents will be affected by the accelerated timetable and the equalisation of the state pension age between men and women. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in his closing remarks, said that he would consider introducing transitional arrangements. Since no amendments have been tabled by the Government, I have introduced my amendment in an attempt to make the Bill fairer. We have heard from Government Members that they have submitted ideas to the Minister, so if they wish to intervene and share those ideas, I will be grateful to hear them.

It is interesting that my aim is to mitigate the detrimental effect; on 9 March, the Minister gave evidence to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which three other members are present. This matter formed the early part of the evidence and there was quite a debate about it, as you will remember. At one point, it was mentioned that the 33,000 women are 1% of the women affected. As it was such a small number, I asked the Minister if anything could be done to mitigate the effects on these women. The Minister said the challenge to that was if you fixed for that group of women, a larger part of the group will say, “What about us?” and the line would just move to another place. That is a fair comment.

However, the Government now seem to be considering mitigation and I would be interested to know how that could be achieved without moving the line to another place. Were some of the suggestions that have been made to the Minister, which we are not party to, about means-testing certain groups of people? I would be really interested to hear what those solutions are, because there is much in this Bill that we all agree upon, but this is a particular sticking point that most people in this room want to find a solution to. Surely the more voices and ideas we hear, the more likely we are to find a way to help this group of women. It is my aim to try to mitigate the detrimental effect that the accelerated timetable will have on this small group of women who are hardest hit. I am part of the larger group of women and I would like to hear the ideas that Government Members have.

If the compromise that I have put forward is accepted, it would mean that no woman born between 6 October 1953 and 5 April 1955 will have longer than one year to reach state pension age from the present position. On Second Reading, I made it clear that I am not opposed to the principle of equalisation, nor am I opposed to the idea of increasing the state pension age to reflect growing life expectancy. We live in an ageing society and the pension age needs to rise to ensure that people’s retirements remain financially secure and enjoyable. I do not want to see a time when people are too old to enjoy their retirement; it is something people have earned.

However, I cannot support the changes that the Government propose. Speeding up the timetable for equalising the state pension age in this manner is unfair to a large group of women. There is a feeling of injustice. People have said to me they feel conned. They thought they were contributing to one thing, but now they are getting something else. A common theme runs through the letters that I have received from constituents. They do not disagree about the state pension age rising and they did not complain when it rose earlier. They recognise that increasing life expectancy makes that logical. The issue is that moving the goalposts at short notice is creating serious financial harm and causing worries. As a result, some are considering working beyond their state pension age but that should be a choice; it should not be forced upon them. Retirement, and especially the age at which people decide to retire, should be about choice.

Some of these women have made a choice. There is a woman in my constituency who over a year ago decided that she would take a voluntary pay-off from local government. People were being encouraged to do that. At that time, she looked on the DWP website and at her pension forecast and she made the decision based on that. This is a point that I have raised with the Minister before. At that time he said the website could only reflect the law as it was at the time. Without any other information or flag on the website that things might change soon, she made a decision to take a pay-off that would see her through to her expected retirement age. Now that retirement age is going to be moved by two years and that money will not last. What am I to say to her? Am I to say that she was foolish to make those plans, or that it is unfortunate but she has just got to pay the price because future generations can not pay for her pension? What do I say to that woman?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

So that I can respond helpfully—I do not have the benefit of having met her constituent—is she able-bodied? Did she take sick leave? Why did she actually stop work?

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

My constituent worked in local government and they were looking to reduce numbers. She thought, “I am fairly near retirement age. If I take voluntary redundancy, I will be able to last until my pension age”. She looked around and saw younger people who perhaps needed that job more. She made the decision that she would be able to manage. She was nearing the end of her working life, and decided that she could take the pay-off because she would be able to manage until her state retirement kicked in. It was a calculated decision based on her finances.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

If my hon. Friend’s constituent had known that she would have had to wait an extra two years, would that lady have continued in her job? Would she have made different financial plans if she had had the correct information?

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

The lady might well have done, because she had calculated that the amount she had been offered to take voluntary redundancy would last that length of time. Clearly, it will not last another two years so she might well have made a different decision.

As I said earlier, it is important to note that those women have already accepted changes to their state pension age. Originally—as I was—they were expecting to retire at the age of 60. Depending on the electorate, I might still do that. They were disappointed when it was announced that retirement age would increase from 60 to 65 years, but they accepted it and planned accordingly. Now those women find that they are nearing the end of their time in the labour market. The goalposts have been moved yet again, and it is not surprising that they are angry and losing faith in the pensions system. That is important, because there are aspects of the Bill that we will discuss later on auto-enrolment, which are welcome. It is about getting people to engage in the pensions market—a market in which people have lost faith over recent years.

To now be saying to a group of people who have perhaps worked for 40 years that, although a promise was made to them and they have kept their side of the promise, the goalposts will now be moved, further weakens people’s faith in pensions. That is not what anyone in this room wants to do. The women are facing a large gap, which must be filled. Their main complaint is the insufficient notice that they have received. My amendment hopes to minimise that to a certain extent. The women are about seven years away from their pension date, which is well below the 15 years that the Turner commission recommends. I should be interested to know why the Minister disregarded that, and opted for fewer years.

I have heard the hon. Gentleman refer to the rapidity of the increase in the living age. I heard him say that on Second Reading, as I did when he spoke to the Select Committee. However, the particular group of women who were targeted before, and are now targeted again, feel so angry and unhappy about such matters. I understand what the Minister said about our arguments about caring responsibilities and volunteering, but that will just happen later on. I am not referring to a group of complaining women. They form the same group whose pension age was moved before. They did not complain about that, but said, “Okay, fair enough. We will be able to deal with that, although it is a disappointment.” But, as I said before, it is the rapidity and the lack of time in which to plan for such a change that is the problem.

I wish to cite some examples of how my constituents will be affected by the Bill. Susan Harris from Belvedere was a teacher for 30 years. In 2005, she took early retirement and a reduced pension. She had made calculations based on when she thought she would receive her state pension. She thought she was making an informed decision. Sadly, now she is one of the unfortunate women facing a two-year wait and a loss in pension income. I know plenty examples of women in the same position, but I do not intend to go into each one because we would be here for a long time. Women with manual jobs have also contacted me, one of whom is a forklift truck driver. She said that she will not be able to do such work when she is in her later 60s, and asks what she will do.

Stephen Metcalfe (Conservative, South Basildon and East Thurrock)

The hon. Lady makes some good points, but she is straying into territory that is about the raising of the state pension age, not necessarily the transition. I can understand why people are worried that they cannot work into later life, but that is a very separate issue from the transitional arrangements. We should focus on those and talk about them rather than the emotive subject of whether people will be able to work later into life.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but what will happen to such people matters. If they are meant to work to a later age, will they be able to work? That is relevant. Another woman who came to me, who has also done the calculations, had an illness in the family, which could not have been expected. She had some savings and a couple of private pensions. She was lucky, because a lot of women of that age do not have private pensions, because they worked at a time when they were not eligible to join the schemes or they were part-time workers who were not eligible. She decided that she could manage with her deferred pension being paid at 60 and her state pension not being paid until she was 63, so she left work to look after her elderly relatives. Now she has to wait for an extra two years, that money will not last.

What will the Minister do to mitigate the circumstances of people like that, who made the right decisions at the right time and took responsibility? What will happen to them? A large number of people have to wait, but only a small number are badly affected. Does not that woman deserve any transitional arrangements? I think she does.

What are the options for the women in these situations? The accelerated timetable means that women who have taken up caring for relatives or providing child care on their retirement, so that the next generation can join the work force, will not be able to do so. As we heard earlier, many women will not have enough savings to fall back on if they cannot hang on in the labour market. Women who have been employed in low-paid work or who have taken time out to have children or act as carers will have few savings to cover them between the time when they expected to retire and the proposed state pension date. They may be able to cover a smaller period of time, but two years is too much.

We must remember that it is not only women that will be affected; their families and their partners will be too. Extended family members may have to contribute financially to help women cover the costs of the period between when they expected to get a pension and when they receive it. The change will also affect many men of pensionable age, because they cannot claim pension credit until their wife or partner reaches pension age. The change will therefore affect the whole household. The 12-month limit outlined in the timetable in my amendment is the maximum that women should have to wait or make alternative plans for. Any longer is unfair and disproportionate.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) wrote to the Minister asking about his plans for the state pension age, he replied:

“While overall there are some aspects of the change that will affect women more strongly than men, we consider the effect is not disproportionate”.

I disagree with him. No man will have to wait longer than a year, but thousands of women will. If that is not disproportionate, what is? When it comes to the state pension, women are already at a disadvantage. The median pension savings of a 56-year-old women are almost six times lower than a man of the same age. Women will have decided to have children, work part-time and raise families. That is a valid decision and one for which they should not be penalised. It is the very type of responsible behaviour that we should encourage.

Retirement is an opportunity for those who have contributed all they can to society to rest with peace of mind, knowing that their contributions will be recognised and that they will be adequately provided for. I worry, however, about the long-term cost for these women. I suspect that there will be significant hardship, anxiety and stress about financial matters. I also worry that ill health will result from working to an older age.

During my Adjournment debate on this topic, my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) quoted a constituent who felt that she was discriminated against when she started work 30 years ago, because she was barred from joining a personal pension scheme. She feels discriminated against once again because of her date of birth and because her pension will be delayed. Does the Minister think that is fair?

I have also raised with the Minister the issue of how the women affected who are not in work are meant to balance their finances. I raised that issue in the Chamber and in the Select Committee. The Minister said that it was an important question to ask. What will these women live on in this two-year period? Take the women we are talking about. They are roughly 57 years old currently. What will they be doing when they are 63, which is before any of them would have had their state pension age anyway? A good proportion of them will still be working. We do not know how many, because we do not know the working patterns of 63-year-olds in a world where the state pension age is higher than 63. We cannot say with certainty. We know that 70% of these women are working now. If they are working at 63, the consequences of this change for that particular group will be to look at working longer.

The Minister then went on to talk about what such women would live on if they were not working. If they were not working because they were out of a job but trying to find one, jobseeker’s allowance is there. I know people say that they do not want to go on the dole, and I understand that, but working-age benefits will take the place of pension benefits. In that two-year period, those women will be able to claim jobseeker’s allowance if they are unemployed. However, the issue I raised in the Chamber with the Minister was that, if they were out of work and had a small savings pot, perhaps from a redundancy, or had a small pension, it is my understanding that they could only claim jobseeker’s allowance for six months. What would they do for the remaining 18 months?

I do not know whether the Minister has any ideas about mitigating factors or that cohort of women, but if he does they would be very welcome. It does not seem fair that because they have a small widow’s pension or a small amount put away which they have saved towards their retirement, they would not be supported in any way even though they were out of work through no fault of their own. In my constituency, for instance, more than 3,000 people are registered as unemployed and there are 107 vacancies. For women of that age, competing in such a labour market would be hard.

The Government’s aim is to eliminate the deficit by 2015. The provision we are discussing will not help them achieve that goal, because it does not come into effect until well after. Therefore, the argument that the proposal will help eliminate the deficit, as has been agreed, is not valid. However, the Minister says that there will still be debt after that. My understanding is that the pensions paid to pensioners today are paid by the people who work today—that has always been the case—and the pensions paid in future will be paid by the people who work at that time. It appears that Government policy, with the Work programme and all the changes to welfare benefits, is to get everyone back into work, so surely that would be achievable.

Another point that I wanted to make about the wider Bill is that there is much in it that we agree on. Let us look at this particular issue and at what the Government are trying to achieve. People are living longer, we agree—perhaps people in every region are not living as long as in other regions, but we agree—and male and female pensions should be brought into line, we agree. The Minister was a pensions expert, and spent 10 years working for women’s pensions and talking about pensions—never stopping talking about pensions—so he knows that pension planning needs three things: due notice, time to prepare and proportionality of impact. But that is where this part of the Bill fails—on those three issues, the Bill fails.

During this morning’s debate, the focus of Government Members was very much on the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West. They said that her amendment would reduce projected savings from the accelerated timetable by £10 billion, then we heard it might actually be more than that. From those comments, such a proposition seemed unacceptable. I therefore moved amendment 24 as a compromise. Based on comments by Lord Freud, it will reduce savings from the accelerated timetable by less than my hon. Friend’s amendment would have—by about £7 billion. If that is not acceptable, will the Minister tell us what is acceptable?

By accepting the amendments, the Government would demonstrate that they want to help the women most affected by the change to the state pension age. Mitigation is what we are looking for; it is what I asked about in March and it has been asked about in the Chamber. On Second Reading, it was clear that people were looking for a solution. As I said earlier, I am happy to take interventions from anyone on the Government Benches who has written to the Minister with different suggestions of mitigation for those women. Sadly, no one has intervened.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

Not yet. Give them time.

Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead)

By accepting the amendments, the Government would demonstrate that they wanted to help those women. I very much hope that the Minister will accept them or, if he cannot, that he will lay out what he believes would be mitigating circumstances that were costed, affordable and acceptable to the whole Committee.

Sheila Gilmore (Labour, Edinburgh East)

I want to speak briefly to address some of the issues that I know will be raised by the Minister, and which were raised in response to the earlier group of amendments. I want to look again at whether it is unfair and unaffordable to make some of the suggested changes. It is very easy to say that one is concerned about the future. This is, as we know, not about deficit reduction. It now appears to be an issue about not burdening our daughters, our grand-daughters, our great-grand-daughters, and so forth.

However, in Government, over such a long period, there will be many changes that take place, which have to be put into the scales when one is looking at what is fair and proportionate. The amendment would not mean such a great deal of savings forgone as the previous group of amendments, but I suspect, though I might be pleasantly surprised, that we will have a similar response to them. At all times, there will be changes and money spent in different ways. I understand that just today the Chancellor has been able to find some £50 million as a concession to the oil and gas industry. Not in 10, 20 or 35 years’ time, but in this financial year. Now, £50 million is not £2 billion, but it is getting on towards £2 billion. I would suggest that in the future there will be other things that we will choose, if we want to, to spend money on. We have to ask ourselves, what is important here? What is important in terms of fairness? And are we really in such a difficult position that this relatively small concession could not be made?

I listened with some interest to what the Minister said about transitional proposals, which may or may not come forward in the near future or the not quite so near future. This is not a new issue. It did not suddenly come to light on Second Reading in this House. Indeed, the matter was debated at some considerable length in the other place. The issue has been at the forefront of a great deal of campaigning since well before the beginning of this year, so there has been some considerable time to come forward with proposals and suggestions that could have been discussed. I remain disappointed that that opportunity has not been taken. If this proposal is not the one that the Minister considers will tackle these issues, I look forward to hearing at least some indication—in general terms, if not in detail—of what he considers will address these problems, which have been a matter of considerable debate for several months, and were not suddenly brought to the Government’s attention on Second Reading a couple of weeks back.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead on tabling this amendment, which addresses a large number of concerns that were raised on Second Reading. It smoothes the position, so that nobody, man or woman, has to endure a delay of more than 12 months to their state pension. I welcome the principle that underpins this amendment. The amendment also demonstrates that there are many options open to the Government, of which this is one. We have debated our preferred amendment, and many of the issues are the same. We have to get this right, now, which is why it is imperative that Members do not shy away from doing the right thing by their constituents today. I welcome this contribution to the debate.

As we have already discussed today, the state pension age needs to rise in order to pay for a more generous basic state pension linked to earnings, and also as longevity increases. This was a principle established by the Labour Government in the Pensions Acts of 2007 and 200, and it is one that we continue to support.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North said, we do not challenge the life expectancy projections used by the Government to underpin their policy changes, and we understand that life expectancy has increased since the Turner report.

The amendment addresses the underlying unfairness at the heart of today’s debate and throughout the passage of the Bill. It accepts the rise in the state pension age as a necessity, as do I, but it recognises that it is unfair to hit certain women disproportionately—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead made forcefully in her speech. The amendment would ensure that the accelerated timetable proposed by the Government is smoothed out, so that no man or woman will need to wait for their pension for more than an extra 12 months.

The Age UK survey and focus groups included one woman who stated:

“Having retired early because of health issues I am living off a combination of capital and a small pension. Pushing back my retirement age by another 10 months will impact hugely on my savings. The changes are too…fast and do not provide the opportunity to make extra savings. The job market is pretty desolate, so part-time jobs are non-existent.”

The amendment would mean that that woman will have to wait only an extra five months before she receives her state pension. It would make the transition easier, and mean that she is less likely to fall into debt during the intervening period. Such debt is a blight on the start of many pensioners’ retirements, which we all believe should be a happy time.

The amendment would mean that women born between 6 June 1953 and 6 March 1955 will have to wait for a shorter period before they receive their state pension. There will still be a delay before they receive that pension, but it will be of up to 12 months, rather than 24 months. For women born between 6 April 1954 and 5 December—those most impacted by the current Bill—the amendment would mean a delay of up to 11 months before reaching state pension age, not 23 months as in the Bill. Women born between 6 March 1954 and 5 April 1954—the 33,000 so adversely affected by the Bill because they have to wait an extra two years—would receive their state pension on 6 March 2019. That would mean a delay of 12 months rather than the 24 months set out in the Bill.

As hon. Members will recognise, the amendment goes a long way to support women and give people time to prepare. Crucially, it would mean that the delay in receiving the state pension is no longer than a year, which would make it much easier financially for that group of women to cope. The amendment would provide some of that help with transition that hon. Members sought on Second Reading.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

Will my hon. Friend confirm that the amendment is different from that tabled in the Lords, which may have been rejected on the grounds that it was not consistent with equality legislation, and provides an excellent opportunity to smooth the transition, and is a new suggestion for the Government to consider?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I agree with my hon. Friend and I will come on to the points discussed in the House of Lords. As hon. Members will know, the amendment bears some resemblance to those tabled in the other place by Lord Boswell and Baroness Greengross. The advantage of my hon. Friend’s amendment, however, is that it at no point widens the gap in the state pension age for men and women, which was the objection of the Minister in the other place, but I will come on to that matter in a moment.

We have dealt at length with the effects of the changes in the Bill, and the fact that women who face a two-year delay in reaching state pension age stand to lose up to £10,000, or £15,000 if they receive pension credit. There has also been some discussion about passported benefits such as bus passes, dental and medical prescriptions, sight tests, Warm Front grants, the winter fuel allowance and cold weather payments. For someone receiving pension credit, there is also help with housing benefit, council tax benefit and crisis loans. Delaying the state pension age by up to 12 months rather than 24 months will make a huge financial difference to those women who are bearing the brunt of the changes. A compromise such as the one we are debating will minimise the burden for the group of 500,000 women who will have to wait for more than a year, and in particular, alleviate the impact on the 33,000 women by changing the delay from 24 months to 12 months so that no woman has to wait longer than any of the men affected by these changes.

Many of the women who are helped by these changes, as my hon. Friend for Erith and Thamesmead mentioned, have already left the labour market for reasons discussed by members on both sides of the Committee today, whether it is about taking early retirement, a redundancy payment, or taking time to care for families. According to Age UK, 68% of women aged 55 to 59 were economically active in the first quarter of 2010, but the figure for 60 to 64-year-old women was only 35%. Once women leave the labour market it may be very difficult for them to return, as was highlighted earlier in the case of one of the constituents in Erith and Thamesmead.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The hon. Lady is trying to draw some sort of inference about the likelihood of women working into their early 60s on the basis of current figures, when the state pension age is just above 60. Is that not meaningless?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

From the impact assessment that the Department published, there is also a big fall off between 50 and 55, and 55 and 59.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Produce the figures.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

It is in the impact assessment that I took you through earlier.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I am not arguing with you.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Okay. If you want me to produce the figures—

Katy Clark (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran)

Order. I remind hon. Members to speak through the Chair.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I am sorry. From a sedentary position, the Minister said he wanted me to produce the figures. The figures are available in the impact assessment published by the Government. The point is that, for all the reasons discussed earlier, which I do not think anyone will dispute, women drop out of the labour market earlier for a variety of reasons, particularly caring responsibilities. We know from the interventions and the speech earlier by the hon. Member for Arfon that many of these women take up caring responsibilities. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead mentioned earlier was that a lot of these women are making informed decisions. They are not just taking early retirement or taking on caring responsibilities hoping that somehow they will make ends meet. They have done the financial calculations, based on the information that was available to them. Many of these women feel that, very late in the day, the goalposts are being moved without them having the time to prepare.

At age 56, 27.3% of women are economically inactive compared with 20% of men—to make the point about the difference between labour market participation rates for men and women, given their different caring responsibilities.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

The hon. Lady is making the case that retirement age drives behaviour; that when you are approaching retirement, you are more likely to take the early retirement package. If she looks at the table in the Library research paper, based on the ONS labour force survey statistics, she will see that men and women behave in broadly similar ways in the years running up to their state pension age. Therefore, the hon. Lady’s argument is a bit circuitous.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

I do not think it is, because these women thought that their state pension age was at 63 or 64 and have made decisions based on that state pension age. It may well be the case that if you adjust the state pension age, people’s behaviours will change. We know from the constituents who have written to us and the evidence from Age UK that if you give people just five years’ notice of these changes—because of course they kick in 2016—or just seven years notice for the 33,000 most affected women, many of these people have already based their decisions on that information. It is not necessarily that women and men make different choices because of their state pension age, but that people have made decisions based on the information available. They have done what, I guess, we hope everybody does, which is take on board all the information available about our occupational pensions, about the state pensions and when we will receive those. We do our calculations based on those and what we can afford. Many of the women, including the women whom my hon. Friend met, did exactly that. They checked the Department for Work and Pensions website and made their decisions based on that and then they had the goalposts moved.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

Does the hon. Lady accept that there may be just as many women who see that their state pension age is changing and therefore change their expectations as to when they might retire, and change their behaviour?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Yes. We have already seen that, because of the changes that the Government made in 1995 to the state pension age, many women are working longer. Earlier, I gave the example of Barbara Bates, who said that since 1995 she had known what her state pension age was going to be and she had accepted that that was fair and that her pension age would increase to 64. What she finds very difficult—given her circumstances, the nature of job she does and her level of savings—is to carry on for another two years with such little notice. This is the heart of the issue. I have had so many letters from constituents and people across the country who say, “I recognise that my state pension age needs to increase. I accept that and I accept that people need to work longer, but I had done my calculations.” As the lady mentioned by my hon. Friend said, they have done their calculations based on the information available. That is why the Pensions Policy Institute says that people need 10 years’ notice. It actually says that women need more notice because women adjust their plans, for example, going part-time at an earlier age compared with their state pension age than men. Turner said people needed 15 years’ notice and Age UK says people need 10 years’ notice. These changes obviously give only five years’ notice.

Harriett Baldwin (Conservative, West Worcestershire)

The hon. Lady raises the question of part-time working. Women working part-time in the 25 to 54 age group, according to the ONS statistics, are broadly similar to women working part-time in the year group 55 to 59. Yes, more women work part-time than men, but there does not seem to be a meaningful statistical difference in terms of their age.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

One thing the hon. Lady will not see from those numbers is what hours they do part-time. A woman might have been working four days a week and have gone down to two days a week to take on a caring role, so those numbers need to be combined with average hours of work. What the Pensions Policy Institute, which is much respected in its area of expertise, say is that women change their plans further away from their retirement than men, and that largely reflects their caring responsibilities.

The hon. Member for Arfon mentioned earlier the higher proportion of women who take up caring responsibilities. I am not totally disputing what the hon. Lady says, but I am saying that there is still a pertinent point here, for two reasons. First, women were making plans based on a retirement age that they thought they were going to have. Secondly, the Pensions Policy Institute and others say that women adjust their plans earlier than men.

To elaborate on the issue of carers, which my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead also mentioned, Age UK’s statistics reveal that nearly three out of 10 of the women affected have caring responsibilities. This builds on the point that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford mentioned earlier. The Age UK report said about the women who were part of their focus group:

“Some women had already left work or had reduced their hours due to caring responsibilities. One of the reasons given for being concerned about further rises in their state pension age was that some wanted or needed to do more caring in a situation where the cared-for person’s health was deteriorating or where they would have liked to have offered to care for their grandchildren”.

That is the sort of scenario that we are talking about.

There are two specific stories from Age UK, published in its report about three weeks ago. The first says:

“I am desperate to get the government to listen. I work part time with a net salary of just over £7,000 per annum to enable me to look after my grandchildren. My daughter needs to work to pay her mortgage and child care is too expensive. My parents are in their 80s and in need of more care as age and infirmity catch up with them. Looking after my family is my greatest privilege and pleasure but it is demanding and knowing that I will now have to work for almost two more years has left me completely dismayed.”

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

One of the consequences of this group of amendments is that the state pension age will still rise to 66. Will there not be absolutely identical stories to the ones that the hon. Lady cites of women who, for all sorts of reasons, are being forced to become carers and who have a long wait to reach pension age—to 66—that will result from amendments that she supports? Why is that any different?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

As I said earlier, the reason that there is a difference is twofold. The first is about giving people adequate notice. The other is the time difference. A 12-month delay in the state pension will cost those on the basic rate £5,000; a delay of two years will cost £10,000. Those on pension credit who have to wait one year will lose £7,500, and for two years it will be £15,000. Those women will have done the financial calculations based on the state pension age that they were told would apply to them.

Steve Webb indicated dissent.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

The Minister shakes his head, but that is the reality. These women have been making decisions based on their occupational pensions, the state pension and the age at which they will receive those pensions. Women such as the one who was mentioned earlier, women who spoke to Age UK and women who have written to me have all made decisions about caring. For example, the woman that I mentioned made the decision to care for her grandchildren. However, if she had known that she would have to wait an extra two years before receiving her state pension, she might not have made that decision. That is exactly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead, who spoke about a woman who had accepted redundancy payment on the basis that she would receive her state pension at a particular age, but who now finds that her redundancy money has to last an extra two years.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

It is slightly invidious to discuss constituents not knowing the full details, but a woman in that situation—I presume that she is 57 or thereabouts—has taken voluntary redundancy. Is it Labour policy that able-bodied 57-year-old women should not be expected to do any more paid work and that we should shape our pension policy around that assumption?

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

As I said earlier, the circumstances of these 500,000 women are all different, but they all made decisions based on what they thought was a contract with the Government—that they had paid into the system for a certain number of years and would get their state pension at a certain age.

As others have said, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North, there were no riots or huge objections when the state pension age was increased from 60 to 65, because that group of women recognised that it was fair, and they were given 15 years’ notice, as Turner had recommended. For these changes, however, they are not being given adequate notice. In 1995, few of those women had envisaged their retirement plans but now, with only six or seven years to go, many of them are well on their way to planning for retirement. They have done the right thing. They have carefully planned their finances and taken on caring responsibilities that they could afford, but they now find that those caring responsibilities are unaffordable because they will lose up to £15,000 of pension income. That is the key point.

The second woman cited by Age UK said:

“My proposed State Pension age will now be 66. I had accepted that the age had been pushed back from 60 but will now have to work extra years. I have 2 children, 1 still at university, and 2 grandchildren under school age who I look after 2 days a week to help my daughter with childcare costs. I had worked all my life with just breaks for maternity, until 2009 when I took early retirement to become full-time carer for a parent with Alzheimer’s. Since their death I have returned to work 3 afternoons a week to supplement the household income. I feel that I and hundreds of other women with similar stories are being penalised for trying to do the best for our families without asking for State help.”

That may be only one example, but it is similar to many others up and down the country. Again, that woman did the right thing. She has cared for her family. She has worked all her life. She has made what she thought were robust financial plans, based on information that she was given, but her plans have been blown out of the water by the rapid changes that the Government are pushing through.

Under the amendment, the state pension age would still go up, but the impact on those 500,000 women would be greatly reduced. Instead of having to wait for more than a year, they would have to wait for less than a year. The 33,000 who would have had to wait exactly two years would have to wait just one year. The 300,000 who would have had to wait 18 months would wait for 11 months or less. There is a difference. It is a balance between the finances and supporting the women on whom the changes would have the greatest impact, which is why I support the amendment.

I want to come to the point mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South. As Members who have followed the Bill’s progress will know, a similar amendment to the one tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead was debated in the other place. The Minister for Welfare Reform said in the other place that any alterations to the Pensions Bill must be measured against the 1995 timetable—that is correct—and that they must not contravene the requirements of the equal treatment directive. In response to an amendment tabled by Baroness Greengross, the Minister for Welfare Reform said:

“Directive 79/7 deals with the progressive implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women in matters of social security. It provides that there shall be no discrimination on grounds of sex in relation to the benefits to which it applies. When the Pensions Act 1995 was passed, the UK legislated to end gender discrimination in the state pension age by April 2020.”

That refers to the proposals that are already in place. He continued:

“Any change we now wish to make needs to be considered in relation to the position left by the 1995 Act. In particular, we need to consider whether any alteration would hinder progress towards equal treatment by either increasing the present gender gap in pension age or prolonging the period of unequal pension ages.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1279.]

The issue was brought up on Second Reading, referring to the coalition agreement and the amendments tabled by Baroness Greengross and Lord Boswell. The Secretary of State said, regarding the legality:

“There is a slight problem with that element of the coalition agreement. It was done in that way at the time, and that is fair enough, but we have since looked at it carefully and taken legal advice. The agreement talks about men’s pension age being accelerated to 66, which would breach our legal commitment to equalisation and then not to separating the ages again. There are reasons for needing to revisit that, and we have done so and made changes.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 48.]

The Secretary of State refused, when I asked, to publish the legal advice, but the Pensions Minister defined the issue by saying that

“the legal issue is that we deviate from equalisation if at any point we widen the gap. The coalition reference to moving men in 2016 and women in 2020 would widen that gap. The issue is directive 79/7, which ‘deals with the progressive implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women in matters of social security…Any change we now wish to make needs to be considered in relation to the position left by the 1995 Act.’—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1279.]”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 126.]

The amendment would deal with the problems identified in amendments in the Lords, so those legal objections would not stand. The timetable proposed in this amendment can be measured against the 1995 timetable, and it is crafted in such a way that the gap would not be widened.

I urge the Minister to study the timetable and confirm that, measured against the 1995 timetable, the timetable laid down by the amendment would ensure that at no point would the gap in the pension age between men and women get wider. If the equal treatment directive was the objection—and it was—that the Government raised to a similar amendment in the House of Lords, we need to revisit their objections to the amendment that we are discussing, as the debate in the other place was about the legal obstacles to the Bill rather than anything else. What, if any, is the reason for the Government’s opposition, if the Government oppose the amendment?

The amendment represents a middle road between the Government’s proposals and the amendments debated earlier today. The Government’s timetable, which will disproportionately affect women and leave people approaching retirement with little time to plan for the change, is expected to save £30 billion by 2026. The amendment that we discussed earlier would save £20 billion over a similar timetable. However, it is clear that this is a middle way. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead said, the estimates for what this might save are roughly somewhere in between. The estimate for the amendment tabled by Lord Boswell was £7 billion. It will be interesting to know whether the Minister and his Department have costed the impact of this amendment and whether it fails for legal reasons or for other reasons.

The Minister for Welfare Reform said in the other place:

“Bringing forward the increase to 66 is about helping to maintain fiscal sustainability beyond 2015…my noble friend’s compromise proposal—the third-way proposal—would still cost more than £7 billion.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 March 2011; Vol. 725, c. GC123.]

Although we cannot be sure in the absence of an impact assessment, we think that this proposal, given its similarity to the proposal debated in the other place, will fall between the savings of the Government’s plans and the amendment that we discussed earlier today.

As well as transitional arrangements, the amendment shows that the Government have a number of options on the table, and this is just one of them. Would not this measure amount to a suitable alternative that deals with the fundamental unfairness at the heart of the Government’s timetable—an unfairness that was acknowledged on Second Reading? As my hon. Friend asked, what are the parameters of an acceptable set of transitional arrangements? If this measure does not meet them, what would the parameters look like?

Would not this set of amendments deal with the concerns that we have heard from thousands of women, groups such as Saga and Age UK, unions and newspapers as diverse as the Daily Mail and The Guardian? Would it not cost the public purse less than any alternative arrangements? Will the Minister pay close attention to this amendment, to the benefits that it could bring to women in the affected group and to its status under the equal treatment directive?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead on doing what this Committee is here to do, which is to probe the legislation to come up with creative alternatives and to present them in a thoughtful and well-informed way. I appreciate the fact that she did all those things. It has given us a good opportunity to revisit one or two of the arguments that we had earlier on today and to take the debate forward. She did the Committee a valuable service in that regard.

In the last 24 hours, I saw a performance of the musical “Fame”, the theme song of which is “I’m gonna live forever”—a song that is dreaded by all Pensions Ministers. Unfortunately, the consequence of this set of amendments for a number of women would be, “I’m gonna work forever.” The amendments are flawed and would provide for large numbers of women in a particular age group no pension age at all. Amendment 24 is defective in that it provides no pension age for women who were born between 7 May 1953 and 5 December 1953 except for those born on the 6th of the month.

I appreciate that we overdo our impact assessments a bit with ethnicity and gender and all the rest of it, but we have yet to conduct an impact assessment on the people who were born on the 6th of the month. This amendment would have a particular effect on them, which was clearly not the hon. Lady’s intention. If she were to pursue her amendment to a Division, I would encourage my hon. Friends to reject it on that basis, if no other.

The amendment has another slightly odd consequence, which is that it would reduce men’s state pension age. The proposed timetable would reduce the state pension age for men born between December 1953 and February 1954 from 65 to between 64 and six months and 64 and 10 months. I feel duty-bound to point that out, but I say it in no criticism of the hon. Lady because I know how difficult it is to get such things right. This perhaps provides further evidence for the point that I made in a previous debate, which is that doing these things in a hurry is not a terribly good idea. We as a Government should take our time to get these things right.

I will not dwell on the technical flaws in the amendment because that would be unfair and unhelpful to the Committee. None the less, the hon. Lady raises some important issues, which I want to try to address without duplicating the comments that I made earlier. She said that she does not want to see a time when people are too old to enjoy their retirement, and I absolutely agree with her.

A little while ago we had people standing outside the Department wearing T-shirts that said, “I don’t want to work till I drop.” I asked my private office where the departmental T-shirt saying the same thing was, because I do not want to work till I drop either. Raising the state pension age to 66 will leave most people with more than two decades in retirement, and is a recognition that, compared with the previous generation and the one before that, our life expectancy, including healthy life expectancy, is improving dramatically. There is nothing in the Bill that means that people will be too old to enjoy their retirement.

Malcolm Wicks (Labour, Croydon North)

A lot of people drop—to use a horrible term—before they get to state pension age, so has the Department calculated how many extra people will die before they get to the increased state pension age that the Minister advocates?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Yes. I was trying to keep my powder dry for the right hon. Gentleman’s next group of amendments. I wish to put him on notice that we will get to them today, if possible. He raises an important point, but my point to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead is not so much about whether people will make it to pension age—the vast majority of people who reach 57 will—but about whether they will be too old to enjoy their retirement. I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point about averages, but we have to deal with the most common outcomes as well as the extreme ones, and what he suggests is not a feature of our proposals.

The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead quite properly mentioned the information that we put on our websites. I saw a figure the other day of something like 500,000, or perhaps 1 million, hits on one of our state pension age calculator websites—I think most of them were by me. I can assure the Committee that on the pension age websites we are clear about the current legal position, which is the only thing we can definitively state because the Committee is, I think, urging us to change what is in the Bill. I ask the hon. Lady to imagine a situation in which we put the current legal position and a calculator based on what is in the Bill on the website and people print that off and go away without looking at it again, but we then amend the Bill and come up with another timetable. I hope she appreciates that information on websites has to be based on the current state of the law. The website clearly flags up, on both the entry page and the forecast page that estimates when someone can get a pension, the sorts of things that are being considered. I accept that the site has been improved to make things clearer, and I agree that we need clear information for people to act upon.

Notice periods have been mentioned—the issue often comes up. The hon. Member for Leeds West told us what Age UK, Saga and the NAPF have said, but not what the women themselves say. She quoted a lot of research by Age UK but missed out a table. Women aged 50 to 57 were asked how much notice they thought they needed of changes in the state pension age, and their replies were rather surprising. Some 31% of the sample thought that they needed a notice period of five years or less and 25% thought they needed six to 10 years, so more women said that getting on for five years rather than six to 10 was about right. In addition, 9% said they needed 20 years, 3% said 25 years, and 4% said they would like to have known when they left school. It is important to say that it is tempting for us to speak for others, but in this case when people were spoken to directly they said something rather surprising.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Will the Minister confirm that in the work by Age UK the mode was 10 years and the average was just under that, at 9.6 years?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The hon. Lady is right. The table I have here shows the mode as 10 years, but various bands have been aggregated so I am not absolutely sure about the calculation. The point remains, however, that more women said five years or less than said six to 10.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

And the mean?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

The mean? My mental arithmetic on a banded table fails me, I am afraid, but this gives us the chance to pause to reflect. When we presume that we know what people think it is sometimes worth asking them and considering what they have to say. Notice periods are an important issue, but opinions on them clearly vary.

The hon. Lady was absolutely right to make the point that today’s pensions are paid for by today’s workers and tomorrow’s will be paid for by tomorrow’s workers. She seemed to suggest that if we nudge up the pension age a bit, and have the Work programme and so on, that would fix it. To give a perspective over the long run, in 2008 there were four people of working age—16 to 64—to every one over 65. In 2058 it will be 2¼. That is the kind of dramatic shift that we are beginning to try to grasp. The marginal changes we are talking about here do not begin to reverse those massive trends, which is why we need to act.

With regard to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead’s amendment as a whole, we estimate it would cost around £5 billion. In a sense, the hon. Member for Leeds West is right to say that it is a halfway house between her amendments with the figure of £10—or £12.5—billion, and zero, the effect of not changing the Bill. It again represents a constructive contribution to the debate and would cap increases at 12 months. With regard to the overall experience of these women, the hon. Member for Leeds West said that many—her favourite phrase of the day—have left the labour market, when 70% are still in work, and that many take up caring responsibilities, when 3% are on carer’s allowance.

Lilian Greenwood (Labour, Nottingham South)

The Minister said earlier that only 3% were in receipt of carer’s allowance. Does he not accept that many of the women undertaking caring responsibilities do not qualify for carer’s allowance? He should acknowledge that.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Indeed. The threshold for carer’s allowance is in the order of 35 hours a week. These will be people with full-time essentially caring responsibilities. The hon. Lady is right that there will be many women in that group who are combining paid work with caring responsibilities. That is the way that they are making ends meet now. A change in pension age does not change that; that is part of their lives. It is an important role that they fulfil; I am not belittling that at all. My point is that they are combining those demanding caring roles with paid work now, and that will not change because the state pension age changes.

Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West)

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that many of these women are drawing on their savings during the time they have gone on to reduced hours to make ends meet? They have done that on the basis of when their state pension age will kick in. When the Minister says that I use words such as “many”, he will remember that I said earlier that of women aged between 55 and 59, 31.5% are inactive; 43.5% are sick, injured or disabled; and 24.2% are looking after family and home. I do not accept that I am using huge generalisations; I am relying on facts and figures.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Thornbury and Yate)

Well, I think the hon. Lady said many had left the labour market, when two-thirds were still working. A listener without the figures in front of them might have assumed that she was talking about a majority rather than a minority. That is what “many” tends to suggest to most people.

The hon. Lady asked about the compliance of this amendment with directive 79/7. I am happy to confirm that because the amendment would not cause the pension age between men and women to diverge—whereas the amendment in another place did have that property—there is no objection on that basis.

We welcome the fact that Labour Back Benchers are coming up with constructive ideas about transition, and we welcome the chance to discuss the amendment. However, I hope that the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead will accept that it is fatally flawed in a number of respects that I am sure she did not intend, and so will seek to withdraw the amendment. If she does not, I encourage my hon. Friends not to support it.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.