I commend the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on the measured way in which she made her comments.
I support this motion, opportunistic though it is, and it gives me no pleasure to say that I will have to vote against the Government, which is not something I make a habit of. I will do so out of loyalty to WASPI, out of support for transitional arrangements which I agree with, and because legislation needs to be fair and proportionate, and these pension changes are unfair and have fallen disproportionately on a small number of women.
Never in my time in the House have I ever known there to be a debate on the same subject five times in the space of just two months; it has been unprecedented. There was standing room only in Westminster Hall in the last debate.
I welcome the six options put forward by the shadow Front Bench. They are fraught with problems, but they are a starting point, and the one thing the Government have not done is come up with some options and offer to help to model them. I hope and ask for a dialogue and that we may have detail and definition. There is genuine cross-party support for getting this problem sorted out. The problem is not going to go away, as we have said before. I ask the Minister to agree that the Secretary of State will meet a cross-party delegation of hon. Members with key members of the WASPI campaign and—with the help of civil servants—cost some possible models and give their implications, so at least we can have some facts about how impractical or practical some of these things might be. That would be a helpful way forward.
Given the time, I just want to read from a couple of letters from constituents that speak much more eloquently than I could. One of them is from a lady who said:
“2 years before I was due to retire at 60 I found out that I had to wait till I was 66. Like many other women, not exactly what I had planned for. In fact when I started work at 15 I was always going to work till I was 60, so everything was planned for that time…
I come from a family who believed in work, to save for the future and be independent. Despite being widowed at 22, and left with a small baby, I never accepted handouts, the only thing I had was child benefit. As a single mother, I worked and supported my son for 6 years—no tax credits. I was lucky enough to remarry when my son was 7 but still continued to work and be independent financially, which was important to me…Unfortunately after 2 bouts of cancer I finally had to stop working when I was in my mid-50s, and much against my ethos, had to claim incapacity benefit, but was again reassured that after 5 years I would receive my pension. So it was a complete shock that 2 years before I was due to receive it I find I will not get it till I am 66—if I live that long!”
Another constituent writes:
“I have worked as a nurse for 40 years, presently as a Macmillan Cancer Specialist.
When I was young, I believed that my Government would look after me when I reached retirement age of 60, and I believe they had a contract with me which they have now broken, as I will be 65 years and 9 months old when I receive my State pension.
This will cause me hardship as I grow older, and after working many years in the NHS, I really feel let down. My pension age has been changed twice, and I cannot believe that a woman born 2 years before me already receives her pension.”
Another lady ended up after making a similar impassioned plea saying:
“It seems that we older women who have contributed to society are considered unimportant and not worth the financial support that we have earned over the years.”
I agree. We need to send out a very strong message to those women that we do care, and that there has been a disproportionate effect from perfectly well-intentioned changes to the pension age. Nobody disagrees with equalisation—nobody says that we need to go back to a pre-1995 level—but there is a deal to be done and a compromise to be reached. Common sense needs to break out and the Government need to listen to those on both sides of this House and to these women, because we value them and they have been affected most disproportionately by well-intentioned changes. I hope that the Minister will take away that message and that we will now be able to open a dialogue, because we are talking about real women facing real hardship after hard-working lives, when they were doing the sort of thing we encourage our constituents to do every day of the week.
3.28 pm