Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women — House of Commons, 2016-02-24
Topic: Social Welfare
Paul Christopher Maynard (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall do my utmost, Mr Deputy Speaker I am embarrassed to be in the Chamber today, because this debate has shamed us all. I am deeply, deeply disappointed by what I have heard. I came here today to speak on behalf of the constituents I have met who are affected by this issue. I wanted to speak about their financial security, about why it matters to them, and about why they want to be resilient and protected from unexpected shocks All those I have met have been both reasonable and very frustrated. Some have been intensely angry, and understandably so. I have no doubt that more could have been done by all parties to improve communication. I am sorry that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) is laughing at me. I wish that she would not laugh at me. This is not a laughing matter. I am desperately trying to explain that I think more needs to be done on behalf of the people affected. We can review what has been done by way of communication, but that will not help those individuals. I wanted to look carefully at what WASPI is calling for, because of the strength of their campaign. Their petition is quite clear: it calls on the Government "to put all women in their 50s…and affected by the changes to the state pension age in exactly the same financial position they would have been in had they been born on or before 5 April 1950" My understanding, and I ask to be corrected by WASPI members themselves if I am wrong, is that that would effectively mean the restoration of the state pension age to 60 for that cohort of women. If that is the case, it is a perfectly valid argument to make, but one I cannot agree with because the cost would be too great for the Exchequer to bear That does not mean that the answer is that we should do nothing. There are many ways of looking at what the transitional arrangements could be. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who called for mitigation and transitional arrangements, but I was not clear what they amounted to. When I have had debates in the Chamber with the shadow Secretary of State, I have always found him to be a very reasonable man. From the first time we met to discuss epilepsy, I have always had a high regard for him. He came up with six options, some of which are mutually exclusive, and none of which had a price tag. Nor did he select a particular preference. However, I thought it was a useful starting point I urge Members on both sides of the House to take account of this point: the more information we have, the more we can start to select which are the most appropriate methods to make progress. What problem are we trying to solve here? What are the most proportionate means of solving it? Not all those six options will address all the concerns that have been expressed to me. Some may be too costly, some may not, but we should be open to that information. The more the options can be costed, the better I want to make another point to WASPI. In its evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, it perhaps made an error of judgment in that it appeared to rule out the prospect of any use of either means-tested benefits or other pensioner benefits to adjust for some of the problems that people face. That was a mistake, because there is potential to discuss how, once people are in receipt of their pension, some way could be found to mitigate or adjust for the impact. The age at which people can claim could be brought forward, but the amount that they claim reduced. I hope that we can also look at whether the changes need to be universal or could be means-tested. Many of my most vulnerable pensioners—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) made this point clear—are going to be the least well off. I therefore hope we can start to have a wider debate.