Pensions Bill

My hon. Friend clearly approves of that. Two years later, however, that woman found that she had lost her pension. As a married woman who had worked and been financially independent throughout her life, she was told that she could not have a pension until her husband retired. To say that she was spitting teeth would be putting it mildly. It was she who first brought home to me the level of women’s understanding of pensions, or at least their understanding, through bitter experience, of poverty in retirement. The Bill will make a big difference, and I am very pleased that for the first time ever the disadvantage inflicted on women pensioners has been recognised by the Government. The Bill would deal specifically with the problem of the constituent who first alerted me to the issue, because it allows women who retire before their husbands to obtain class B pensions without having to wait for their husbands to retire. It will therefore bring direct and practical benefit to a large number of women. Other elements in the Bill will right the wrongs that have left so many women pensioners in poverty. At present, one in five single women pensioners risk being in poverty owing to their different working patterns and the impact of child care, widowhood and divorce. The effect of divorce has not been sufficiently recognised. In 2002, 40 per cent. of divorced older women were in receipt of minimum income guarantee, and nearly 63 per cent. of divorced and separated older women currently have no private pension income at all. The Bill deals with a number of complex and detailed issues. Several have already been discussed today, so I shall deal with just four. Clause 3, an important clause, concerns pension credits for parents and carers. A welcome aspect of the Bill is the extension of carers’ ability to claim the credits that they need in order to obtain pensions, but it is important for the new entitlement provisions to be drafted widely enough. That is something that worries carers’ groups. Constituents have expressed to me a fear that in its present form the Bill may be too restrictive, as it defines entitlement according to existing regulations or in terms of benefit entitlement, including, in the case of those caring for children, entitlement to child benefit. That means that some carers may miss out. It might be more constructive to replace or supplement the proposed arrangement with a system of certification by local authorities. There would be logic in that, as local authorities—through the director of education and children’s services, and through social services departments—are responsible for commissioning care for children and vulnerable adults. They would therefore be able to issue certificates identifying the carer and the amount of care being provided. Let me give an example that has arisen a number of times in my constituency. There is a high level of employment among my constituents, and women have traditionally worked. My constituents are also very family-orientated. If—unfortunately, this is a frequent reason for family breakdowns—a lone mother has become involved in substance abuse or her physical or mental health collapses, the grandparents will often take in her children and, in many cases, care for them into adulthood. In some instances, a grandmother who is still of working age must give up her job. In others, the grandparents will not obtain the child benefit book. Not wishing to bother with the bureaucracy of having it altered, they may deliberately leave it with the children’s mother to maintain a link between her and her children, and perhaps also to encourage her to think about getting the children back. I understand that, in such a case, a grandmother would not be able to obtain credits towards a pension because of the work that she had done in caring for the children, unless she could qualify as a foster parent. I have contacted social services departments on several occasions about the possibility of securing foster payments for grandparents, but I am not sure that they could qualify as foster parents, which is what I gather the legislation requires. Carers who look after a number of different people for shorter periods would not qualify either, unless the hours were right. Moreover, carers would have to be claiming the right benefits. Disability living allowance must be at the higher or middle rate, not the lower rate. Parents, or in many cases a lone parent, with a number of children receiving the lower rate would have to stop working to look after them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give some indication of Government thinking, and will say whether he is prepared to consider the possibility of local authorities’ being able to issue certificates stating who is or is not a carer. We certainly need some way of ensuring that people with a valid status as carers can obtain support without having to be in receipt of all the right elements of benefit. Another issue that has often been raised with me is not addressed in the Bill. Overlapping benefits and entitlement to mobility benefits affect pensioners generally and also carers, but the Bill is silent on them. I wish to discuss two particular points, one of which is pensioners’ rights to carer’s allowance, the entitlement to which currently ends at retirement. I hope that I am correct about the technical points on this matter, but if not, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will put me right. The withdrawal of that allowance means that pensioners caring for disabled spouses or for children do not get support for performing that caring role. The theory is that because carer’s allowance reimburses people for lost income as a result of their caring, it is not appropriate for pensioners. However, for people in that situation it appears simply that once they hit retirement age recognition of their caring role is lost—as is the fact that such caring is, indeed, work. I presume that when the state retirement age increases, the entitlement to carer’s allowance also increases, but I would appreciate clarification on that, and also on whether there might be any relaxation of the rules in respect of pensioners’ rights to access carer’s allowance. I have written on several occasions to the Department about the issue, which continues to be a source of considerable grievance to many of my constituents. The second issue to consider is the ability of pensioners to get the mobility component of disability living allowance. Once people start receiving pensions they get attendance allowance rather than DLA. That restriction is bitterly opposed by my constituents. We enjoy greater longevity and have increased expectations of a good quality and standard of life when we are older; my constituents—in common with those of other Members—expect to remain mobile until they are much older than did previous generations. I visited a constituent at home shortly after she had had, at the age of just over 60, both of her legs amputated. She was refused any help to get mobile. She had been used to driving and had previously led a mobile and active life, but just because she was retired, she was told that she would not get as high a level of support as she might otherwise have received. That was difficult for her to accept. Will my hon. Friend the Minister say whether any further thought is being given to such support for pensioners? On the entitlement of part-time workers to pensions, the reduction in hours worked for people to qualify for state pension is very welcome. As a result, many more women will be entitled to the state pension. Despite what the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) said, it would have been wrong to have dramatically improved the value of the state pension when that would have left so many pensioners still in poverty simply because they are women and so they do not get the state pension at all. I look forward to the value of the state pension being increased once the proposed changes are in place. Those changes will also mean that more people—up to a total of 70 per cent. I think—are included in the state pension net. There is still an outstanding issue related to the qualification of part-time workers. Many women in my constituency make up their working week by working a number of shifts for different employers—working flexibly to meet their family commitments and their financial needs. That has been of benefit to the local employment market and the local economy, as well as to local families. Some such women might work eight hours for one employer, eight hours for another and four for another, and yet they still might not qualify for a state pension. Will my hon. Friend the Minister look at the possibility of easing up on the rules so that more part-time workers are able to qualify for the state pension? My final point, which overlaps with those made by several other Members, is to do with the provision of information and the personal accounts delivery authority, which the Bill will establish. I welcome that, and I regret the early efforts to undermine a new savings scheme for pensioners that should give people the cornerstone for independence in their retirement based on the savings that they have made during their working lives. That is the right way to proceed, and the loss of that linkage has been profoundly damaging to people’s security in retirement. It is also right that the scheme should be compulsory—which would mean, of course, that there would be auto-enrolment. But there is a caveat. In the past, people have asked me what sanctions might be imposed on those who do not make private provision. However, there must still be a secure safety net for people who are not able to, or who, for one reason or another, do not, make private provision. The Bill provides only for the outline establishment of the authority—the detail will come later—but I ask the Minister to comment on how the difficult issue of information and advice will be handled. Every time that there has been a major problem with pensions, usually the heart of that problem has been to do with the provision of information—not merely the detailed advice on what people should get, but the basics of the information. The pensions miss-selling scandal, for which the Conservative party was responsible, was largely to do with Government advertising that encouraged people to take out private pensions. I remember an earlier debate in this House when those advertisements were waved around and their terms were read out. The widows’ state earnings related pension scheme debacle—constituents of mine provided one of the test cases considered by the ombudsman—also centred on the provision of information and whether people were given notification about the changes at the right time. Recent problems with occupational pensions have also been caused by issues related to the provision of information. [Interruption.] Yes, I take on board the point that the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) makes. One of the issues that got women into pension difficulties was the married women’s stamp and what information women were or were not given when they signed up to it. A steady stream of women have come to my advice surgery saying that when they signed up for it they did not understand that that meant they would not get their own proper pension. I have looked into that. Employers have provided forms that show that the women had the necessary information and that they ticked the boxes and signed the papers, but many women argue that they did not understand what they were doing when they signed for that stamp. In my first jobs, I had the married women’s stamp, and I know exactly how it felt to sign something and then later to find out that I had, to an extent, signed away my future.