Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 9: 9: Clause 3, page 4, line 17, at end insert— ““23B Contributions credits for relevant grandparents and other relatives (1) This section applies to the following benefits— (a) a Category A retirement pension in a case where the contributor concerned attains pensionable age on or after 6th April 2010, (b) a Category B retirement pension payable by virtue of section 48A in a case where the contributor concerned attains pensionable age on or after that date, (c) a Category B retirement pension payable by virtue of section 48B in a case where the contributor dies on or after that date without having obtained pensionable age before that date, (d) a widowed parent’s allowance payable in a case where the contributor concerned dies on or after that date, (e) a bereavement allowance payable in a case where the contributor concerned dies on or after that date. (2) The contributor concerned in the case of a benefit to which this section applies shall be credited with a Class 3 contribution for each week falling after 6th April 2010 in respect of which the contributor was a relevant grandparent or a relevant relative. (3) A person is a relevant grandparent in respect of a week if the person is engaged in looking after, within the meaning given by regulations, a grandchild or grandchildren under the age of12 or a disabled grandchild or grandchildren under the age of 18, in that week. (4) A person is a relevant other relative in respect of a week if the person is engaged in looking after, within the meaning given by regulations, a child or children under the age of 12 to whom he or she is related or a disabled child or children under the age of 18 to whom he or she is related, in that week. (5) In this section ““relevant other relative”” shall include but shall not be confined to a sibling, half-sibling, aunt, uncle or cousin of the child or children who is or who are being looked after but shall not include a registered childminder. (6) Regulations may make provision for a person’s entitlement to be credited with Class 3 contributions by virtue of falling within subsection (3) above to be conditional on the person— (a) applying to be so credited in accordance with the prescribed requirements, and (b) complying with the prescribed requirements as to the provision of information to the Secretary of State. (7) For the purpose of determining entitlement to a benefit to which this section applies, a week that falls partly in one tax year and partly in another is to be treated as falling in the year in which it begins and not in the following year. (8) In this section ““the contributor concerned”” has the meaning given in section 21(5)(a).”” The noble Baroness said: This amendment is necessary if Amendment No. 4 concerning added years is not acceptable to my noble friend. Amendment No. 9 proposes that a relative, probably but not essentially a grandparent, who cares for a child under 12 for 20 hours a week or more, to be specified in regulations, would be eligible for credit to his or her BSP. Clearly, this is a probing amendment at this stage. Why? The average age when a woman becomes a grandmother is now 49 or 50. She provides childcare in order that her daughter, who may be a lone parent, can work. Some 2.33 million women in work have children under 12 years old and they pay tax and national insurance. Theoretically, those women would be eligible for HRP if they were not already paying for their own full stamp. They work because they have childcare. For one-third of them, their primary child minder is the grandparent. Why? Childcare is a matter of trust. You feel comfortable and less guilty working. Most women I know who work with young children have an edge of guilt and concern. They feel less guilty if their young child is looked after and loved as they would do, and they get that from their own mother. If a child is poorly, a woman would trust their mother to take him or her to the GP in a way that a registered child minder—certainly, a nursery—probably could not or would not do. Because the grandparent is childminding, the daughter can and does work. Ihave been briefed on this by the West Norfolk Women and Carers’ Pensions Network. It can be an issue particularly in a rural community where travel to work is harder, wages are lower, commercial childcare is less available, families are less mobile and there is therefore much more likely to be reliance on grandparent care. However, that care comes at a huge price to the grandparent who may, in her fifties, otherwise have been able, finally, to work full time. But if she does, her daughter may not be able to do so. The grandmother loses any potential income from a full-time job and, with it, loses any entitlement to a BSP. Yet, although the daughter gets HRP, in theory, and pays a stamp—a double-qualification—neither can be transferred to the mother. What is worse—which is why this really is a problem—is that, because the childcare is provided by a grandparent, the grandparent cannot be registered as an official childminder and cannot be paid childcare tax credit. That is extremely unfortunate; indeed itis daft. I hope that no one will talk about the commercialisation of family care. We do it all the time when we call it the carer’s allowance for older people. The result is that grandmothers still undertake the care, but daughters cannot claim childcare tax credit for their mothers and therefore can seldom afford to pay for that care, unlike the position if their child is cared for by a relative stranger. Instead the daughter may do her best to help with grocery or petrol expenses. Both the mother and the daughter are stuck. Let us be clear: without care by grandmothers, many daughters would not and could not contemplate work. With that care they do work, but courtesy of a degree of loving exploitation gracefully given by a woman in her fifties who loses income and pension. The amendment proposes that where 20 hours of care are established and the parent is in work, the notional HRP that has been forgone should effectively be transferred and become a childcare credit for pension purposes for the carer. It then becomes something of a win-win situation: a secure, stable and loving environment for the child; a less guilty and stressful working life for the mother; and even if income is forgone by the grandparent, the pension has not been lost. I know how receptive and responsive my noble friend has been to the issues faced by some grandparents, so I hope he will recognise that this is yet one more problem encountered by women in their fifties. It would disappear if Amendment No. 4 were embraced, but in the absence of that, I wonder whether my noble friend can help me on Amendment No. 9. I beg to move.