Pensions Bill

As you might expect, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to confine my remarks to amendments (a) and (b) to Lords amendment No. 202 and the Northern Ireland equivalent, amendment No. 203, respectively. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) says, it would be irresponsible to table an amendment with a view perhaps to dividing the House without having an idea of the costs. On 30 October I tabled a written parliamentary question for named day answer on 4 November asking what the cost of the amendments would be. As of lunchtime today, I had received no response. Therefore, I am rather surprised that the Minister was able to give the figure, as I asked for it a month ago and have not been given it. I had to table my amendments last week in ignorance, which is unsatisfactory. I hope that she accepts that. I understood the Minister to say that the £3 billion—a large sum of money—relates to the relaxation of the 20-year rule. I do not know whether she has a separate figure for amendment (a). I will be happy to take an intervention at any point if she wants to clarify that. Some issues of principle are at stake. The Government accepted Baroness Hollis's amendments, and I pay tribute to her for her work. We are talking about a very restricted group of, generally, women. Many hon. Members will have heard the press coverage and thought, ““Something very dramatic is going on. Lots of women will be entitled to buy back years.”” The impression given was that the changes were given extensive coverage, but there was no mention on the day of the fact that the cost of class 3 was going up by about 50 per cent. Mysteriously, that fact never entered the discussion. As it turns out, it is not an unreasonable charge for the benefit that has been given, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, but it would have been nice to have had a more balanced account of what was being done. Instead, we got the jam rather than the slight sting in the tail. The package restricts the concessions to a narrow group and is of nil cost to the Exchequer. The amendments are probing. I want to know whether the Government will look again at the restrictions that they have applied, even if not to the extent that I propose. The first restriction is that women who have reached pension age by April this year, or will do so over the next few years, can buy back, but the die is cast for those who are 61, 62 or 63, as the hon. Gentleman said. Having said that, in the unlikely event that anyone follows our proceedings, I would like to put on the record a brief commercial for the scheme whereby women who have already retired can still buy back. Women born between April 1938 and October 1944 can buy back missing years from 1967 to 2001-02 under the reinstatement of deficiency notice project. The deadline for some women is next March; for others, it is the year after. There is still a chance for women to buy back if they do not fall within the scope of the Lords amendments. I hope that as many women as possible will do that—and continue to send me commission as they do so. The year 2008 is inevitably an arbitrary cut-off. Many women who retired a few years earlier with incomplete pensions feel aggrieved by that and write to me in large numbers. I am sure that they write to the Minister as well. Baroness Hollis said:"““I would like this to go further. Ideally, it would be back-dated for older women who had already reached state pension age.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 October 2008; Vol. 704, c. 1590.]" My suggestion is very much in the spirit of what the Baroness was trying to do. It is entirely consistent with that. Amendment (a) refers to 1978, which essentially means pretty much all retired women, which may be overdoing it, but I hope that the Government will over time look at the issue again. It is in the spirit of what used to be called new Labour—I do not know whether that exists any more. It is very much in the spirit of something for something. We are not asking for charity or a freebie. The women have incomplete records. Why? Generally because they have spent time in low-paid, part-time jobs not earning enough money, perhaps while bringing up a family. There is a raft of perfectly good reasons why women may not have complete pension records. To penalise them by saying that they cannot even now put money back into the system because it is too late—their chance has gone—is unfair. The reason women in their early 60s and beyond are getting incomplete pensions is by and large because of pension rules written in the 1940s, yet we still apply that model and women are suffering today because of it. It is anachronistic and we could extend the scope of the arrangement. As it is, what we will have is essentially a two-tier retired population. Women who hit 60 now or over the next few years will potentially get a much more generous deal. Women who are now 61, 62 or 63 will for ever be the poor relative. That simply seems unfair. The Minister said, ““Ah well, but many of them are living overseas.”” Good luck to them! I am astonished that the Government's basis for not accepting an amendment that allows women to put money into the system and get something back out of it is that they do not live here any more. They paid all their contributions when they lived here. Why should they not choose where to live? They should not be discriminated against because they have chosen to go and live somewhere else. I was not aware that that was culpable morally in the Government's eyes, but perhaps it is. We should extend the scope of the arrangement, perhaps not back as far as 1978, but to an interim period. The second amendment, amendment (b), notes that we are going to restrict the concession to people who have already put 20 years or more into the scheme, and, again, I find that very odd. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire will be familiar with the biblical verse:"““To those who already have, more will be given.””" I had not realised that it was Government policy, but it seems to be now. If one already has at least two thirds of a pension, because once the minimum period is 30 years, anyone with 20 years will get at least two thirds of a pension, and potentially much more, one will be able to pay more in; but the women who have put in 19, 18, 17 years or less, and are already scrimping and getting by on wholly inadequate pensions, will not be able to. The women who have already put in 20 years or more are, on average, more likely to be able to afford the extra years, but it will be a struggle for the women on smaller pensions. There will not be hordes of them, and I am astonished at the cost, because it will depend on take-up. Given how complicated the whole process is, I should be astonished if there was take-up on the scale that has been described, but those women are surely the priority, so why have the Government prioritised women with bigger pensions over those with smaller pensions? It seems to be entirely the wrong way round, and I hope that the Minister will explain the logic, if logic be the right word for the provision. The women who suffer most through the pension system are those who have put in, perhaps, eight or nine years, and do not get any pension at all because they have not satisfied the 25 per cent. rule. It would be good if those women were able to benefit most by being able to make extra contributions and, actually, to receive a pension. Some of them do not, and they are precluded. I was rather startled by Lord McKenzie's comments on the matter, because, on the reason for 20 years, he said:"““That enables us to target help to those who have already made a significant contribution and are genuinely seeking to plug small gaps in their records.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 October 2008; Vol. 704, c. 1589.]" What is not genuine about the woman with 15 years of contributions? In what sense is that not a genuine attempt to plug a gap, albeit not a small one? The crucial point is that many women have gaps in their records, but they have not spent their time backpacking around Australia, as I think someone mentioned. The odd one may have, but Government policy should not be framed around the assumption that women with incomplete pensions are backpackers. They, like anyone else, simply want to put in their own money and get something back for it. Something for something seems to me to be a good basis for Government policy. By tabling these amendments, I have been able to get an answer to my parliamentary question, which I could not get by tabling a parliamentary question. We therefore now have an idea about the cost, and it is clearly very large. I shall not pursue my amendment, but I urge the Government both to look again at the very tight and restrictive way in which they have drawn the other amendments, and to think about whether something more generous might have been considered.