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Raising of the Pension Age

The hon. Gentleman must admit that there is an issue with equality and the requirements in European law to equalise pension ages, to which the previous Conservative Government responded by passing the 1995 Act. Perhaps he can give us at least an indication. Surely Conservative Front Benchers took some kind of legal advice on their proposal to increase the male retirement age in 2016—that is certainly what the shadow Chancellor appeared to be saying in his speech—and the female retirement age either straight away in 2016 or in 2020. If the Conservatives propose the latter, they would be legislating to make the retirement ages unequal again, which is clearly against European law.