---

Pensions Bill

I shall focus on just one issue in my brief speech. I shall return to where the Secretary of State began—the issue of women's pensions, which has been touched on throughout the debate. I want to be helpful to the Government for two reasons. I thank the Secretary of State and, through him, his officials for the constructive dialogue in which I have been able to engage with him in recent months on a range of matters related to women's pensions, and for the efforts that he is now making to help resolve some of the technical problems connected with home responsibilities protection. I thank him and his officials for their constructive approach. However, he has, with due deference to the noble lady, what might be called the Baroness Hollis problem. Last summer, the Government were defeated in another place in the attempt to do something about the 2010 pension changes and the issue of women who retire before 2010 on a much less generous state pension regime. Baroness Hollis came up with one suggestion that the Government said they would do something about. They looked at it and have said that they will not do something about it. I want to offer the Government a way out and to offer my solution to the Baroness Hollis problem. I do so in a constructive spirit and, as the Minister knows, I will be happy to speak to him at great length about it if he wants. After the announcement in the Lords that no progress was going to be made on the issue, Jackie Ashley wrote a column in The Guardian on Christmas eve describing what a problem this was. As I had nothing else to do on Christmas eve, I wrote to The Guardian and my letter was published a few days later. I pointed out that there were a set of women with gaps in their national insurance record who could do something about it now if only they knew about it. Interestingly, I read The Guardian letters column a few days later and found that a citizens advice bureau manager had written to say that I was right—it was a good letter, obviously. She said that even she had no idea that people could fill their national insurance record gaps on those special terms because the system was so complicated. Baroness Hollis is trying to address the problem arising from the fact that many women are approaching, or have passed, pension age, have gaps in the national insurance record and could fill them, but have not done so. We need to use the existing mechanisms to enable women to fill those gaps. As the Secretary of State said at the start of the debate, women—we are principally talking about women—can fill up to 12 years of contributions' gaps now. We are in 2008, and one can pay back for any of the last six years, which takes us back to 2002. Between 1996 and 2002, there was a different mess; the Government were not telling people about such gaps in the national insurance record. To make up for that mess, there is a special scheme that allows people to pay back from 1996 to 2002. The problem is that lots of people do not know about it. I have set myself the goal of trying to find them individually. This might be slightly adventurous and I would like to enlist the Minister's help in the process. I have found a few so far, but there are a few still to go. My serious point is this: the Government hold records on everybody's national insurance, so they hold records on all of those women who have gaps in their records for the years for which the special scheme applies and since then. If those women knew that they were entitled to fill the gaps in their record on these very favourable terms, many would do so. I have found dozens of such women who, when we have told them about the scheme, have found they could get, literally, free money. They have found out that they could pay a couple of thousand pounds in back contributions and earn £3,000, £4,000 or £5,000 in back pension. The scheme is so generous that the Government do not even ask them for the money and simply pay the difference. I have had the pleasure of ringing up women the length and breadth of Britain—I have had several proposals of marriage—and helping them to discover that they could have free cash and a bigger pension. The problem is that the Government know exactly who they all are. They never told one set of women and they told another set but only once, several years ago, and in a somewhat complicated way. All those women have that latent entitlement that they are not taking up. The Baroness Hollis problem—the problem of lots of women with incomplete records who could fill them—could be made much better if the Government were to access their own records proactively and contact the women who are missing out. Very briefly I shall identify the two groups about whom I am most concerned. The first are the women who did not get a letter from the Government telling them about gaps in their record. Such women are perhaps atypical now but are typical of a generation of women who left school at 15, worked full-time and paid some national insurance, left work to have children, went back for a period and paid the married woman's stamp, but maybe stopped altogether when they had other children. They might work in Oxfam, or they might care for an elderly relative. Basically, their working lives stopped in 1980. In other words, they have a dirty great gap in their contribution record. A few years ago, the Government took the view that they would not tell these women that they were entitled to fill the gaps in their record on very favourable terms. The scheme is brilliant and the Government know all the women who are entitled to it, but they chose not tell them; they did not write to them. This set of women could benefit if the Government used their own information to tell them. I am not asking for legislative change. All the information and powers are there and the Government just need to tell the women. Even if the Government were simply to prioritise those who have most to benefit from the scheme, that could help a lot of the women whom Baroness Hollis is concerned about to get better pensions. The second group is the women the Government did write to in 2004-05. Some of them responded, but, even on the Government's own figures, tens of thousands have still yet to respond. There is a ticking time-bomb in that there is a deadline, as the Minister well knows; the scheme will run out by 2009 or 2010. There are lots of women out there who could take advantage of it. I find them practically every day—the Minister looks mildly sceptical, but I can give him names and addresses. Practically every day I find another woman who could take advantage of the scheme and who received the initial letter and either did not understand it or, crucially, received it at a time when it was not right for them to respond. They might have been 60 when they received it and they did not have the £2,000 but they are now 64 and it is worth their while to respond, as they will get the offset and they will end up in cash. So it was right for them not to respond when they received the letter, but I would bet any money that they binned the letter because they thought, ““I haven't got thousands of pounds,”” instead of putting it in an envelope marked, ““Open again in 2008 when it is worth while.”” The Government know who those people are. There are a lot of women of the type whom the noble Baroness is rightly concerned about—as is the Minister, and as am I—and whom the Government could help without a massive spending commitment. Of course, some money would be involved.