Pensions Bill

My Lords, I add my congratulations to those already offered to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the courageous and determined battle she has fought on behalf of us all and which she has at last won, or at least won as far as one could expect at this stage. I also congratulate the Government on the real improvements that they have introduced in the Bill following the Turner report’s recommendations, particularly the improvements for carers, the majority of whom are women. We should always remember that women are among the poorest pensioners. It remains shaming that only 30 per cent of women compared with 95 per cent of men currently retire on the full basic state pension. By 2010, however, that percentage will have increased to 75 per cent, even if it is likely to be as far away as 2025 before men and women reach the state retirement age with an equal entitlement to the full basic state pension. This pathway all too clearly illustrates, once again, the considerably greater sacrifice that women have made and will continue to make. By the time that an equal retirement age is achieved for both sexes, women will have sacrificed some seven years from their original or earlier state retirement age of 60 while men's loss will be about two years, from 65 to 67. Noble Lords may have noticed that I have not returned at Report with my request that, from the moment that a unisex retirement age is achieved, men and women should be treated equally for annuities and not, as now, on the basis that women have a presumed longer life. Sadly, although I thank everyone who spoke to my amendment, there was not sufficient support for it from either the Government or the Opposition. Nor indeed have the women's organisations got their act sufficiently together on this issue to press it forward, although I look forward to developments there, too. Ironically, this justice for women, on which we are rightly congratulating the Government and especially the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is another illustration of why that other continuing, blatant annuities discrimination should and could have been remedied in the Bill. Above all, throughout our debates on the Bill, I, like other noble Lords, have been hugely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for her help and formidable pensions expertise. I should like to thank her for the legacy of vital information contained in the speech that she made in Committee on 14 July this year in support of my amendment. The material in that speech alone is enough to reassure me that the argument for sex equality in annuities will eventually be won.