Pensions Bill

moved AmendmentNo. 81: 81: After Clause 18, insert the following new Clause— ““Equality of annuity rate between men and women Notwithstanding any statutory provision or rule of law to the contrary, any compulsory annuity forming part of a private sector pension shall be payable at the same rate to men and women.”” The noble Baroness said: The purpose of the amendment is to draw attention to the fact that equal opportunities legislation is not effective in the area of annuities. It should apply there and I hope that I can persuade noble Lords of that. The amendment defines the area in which there should be no discrimination between annuities granted to a male and a female on the same terms in a private pension. This issue has a history and takes me back to my early days on the Equal Opportunities Commission. When the EOC was established, retirement age and pensions were firmly outside the scope of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and were not the concern of the EOC. In those days, we received complaints from men who thought it was unfair that they be required to work for five years longer than women before they could receive their pensions. We also received complaints from women because they were not allowed to work beyond the age of 60, and therefore earn the higher pension resulting from their retiring at 65. I accept that the situation has become more flexible since then. It was not long before pensions, following a legal case, were viewed as pay. Equal pay was firmly part of the EOC’s responsibility, because it was covered by the Sex Discrimination Act, both to encourage equal opportunities and to enforce the legal requirement for equal pay for work of equal value. Today, there are other forms of discrimination that were mentioned on the first day of Committee, and certain sections of the community are much worse off than others. For example, people who have been to university are likely to live longer. People who have been involved in heavy manual work may have a shorter life, and so on. One accepts that. I very much admire what the Government are doing to equalise, as much as is humanly possible, the role of women as carers who have looked after many aspects of family life. If the state had paid for that the cost would have been horrendous. As many resources as possible should go towards making our society more equal. We have seen, in the amendments that we have already discussed, how keen your Lordships are to ensure that those already generous areas can be extended further. However, one is entitled to ask, as I did on Second Reading, for how long the responsible Minister will continue to defend what I and one or two other noble Lords regard as a grossly sex-based inequality. I am proud of our sex discrimination legislation and of the fact that it has set the pace for many other countries to follow. Perhaps I may quote figures given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who referred to the gender filter. She said that, "““men’s contributions for a full basic state pension will come down from 44 years to 30 years””—" a gain of 14 years— "““whereas women’s will come down from 39 years to 30 years””.—[Official Report, 14/5/07; col. 39.]" That is nine years. Another method of calculating further reduced that period. Equally, an earnings link benefits most of those who have a complete basic state pension. Surprise, surprise: 92 per cent are men and less than 30 per cent are women. I would argue that that is not just sex discrimination, but even indirect sex discrimination—an important legal concept that was first introduced by the Sex Discrimination Act. One may apply the same conditions to men and women, but maybe one is disadvantaging one sex more than the other. I hope that I receive some encouragement from the Minister and that at some stage, as we advance towards the time when women and men retire at the same age, with the same level of responsibilities for caring and so on, this important principle of equal opportunities for men and women will not be left to the market—it would go wider than that if we had an equality Act—and we should consider whether the present situation can continue to be seen as fair and just. I beg to move.