Pensions Bill

I pay tribute to the West Norfolk Women and Carers’ Pension Network, part of the Equal Opportunity Commission’s pensions network, for raising this important point on behalf of mothers and grandmothers. In her thoughtful speech the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, gave us some interesting statistics, and I have one or two more. The 41 per cent of women who work part time earn on average 41 per cent less per hour than men working full time. That gives us some idea of the gap. Further, parents in a weak labour market position, such as unskilled workers, often find it harder to negotiate family-friendly working arrangements with employers and to find jobs that fit in with their parental responsibilities. Their bargaining power in the labour market is clearly not high. We agree with the West Norfolk Women and Carers’ Pension Network that more work needs to be undertaken nationally to discover the full effect of how grandparents miss out on state pension provision. Like us, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, supports a universal citizen’s pension, but to be honest, we are sceptical about whether this amendment is on the right side of the line of how far one should go down the route of introducing lots of individually tailored changes. That is what worries us. If I may put it this way, the more tweaking and complexity introduced to try to patch up this broken system, the more complicated it gets. On balance, and with reluctance, we feel that this is probably a complication toofar. We would prefer to go for more universal amendments short of a citizen’s pension. However, I pay tribute to the pensions network for raisingthe issue. It is something we need to keep a close eye on. Finally, I was struck by the way the noble Baroness talked about loving exploitation, particularly the edge of guilt in the relationship between mothers and grandmothers and the issue of childcare. Just last Saturday lunchtime, my daughter, who is not even married yet and so far as I know has no immediate plans to have children, casually said to her mother, ““Mum, when I have kids, would you look after them for two days a week, please?””. I hope that my daughter is going to be a well-paid barrister and thus able to afford childcare, and my wife is a doctor with no plans to give up work. She said, ““Certainly not. At least, not unless there is a problem””.