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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, am concerned about what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, described as disproportionate disadvantage. I am concerned about women, the great carers in our society—the people who care about the members of their family who are perhaps more vulnerable or dependent and need extra support. They are the people who, because they care so much, are willing to give up their time and perhaps work part-time. I belonged for a period to the Standing Commission on Carers. A survey was reported to the standing commission in its first year which found that the vast majority of family carers are indeed women. It found that when women care, they are more likely to work part-time or give up their occupation, and that men who cared did so extremely well but for fewer hours. Caring was much less likely to impact on their employment hours. This change is being made too quickly and comes too soon. I acknowledge that, on the face of it, women live longer and that it is perhaps anomalous that their current pension age is lower. Yesterday I met the carers’ forum at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was made up of 12 people who represent carers of sons, daughters, partners and elderly parents with different mental health conditions. Some cared for somebody in their family with a learning disability or autism. The majority of them were women. I asked them how this change, and the speed of this change, would affect people in their position. They represent carers of people with mental health conditions, and they made some very important points quite forcibly. They said that pension equality is fine, but that perhaps it should come into effect when society is more equal—when women start getting equal pay and occupational pensions, and particularly when men begin to share the caring burden more equally. They support the right of carers to work; they recognise the role of work as respite. They wanted me to stress the importance of not underestimating the effect on carers of a rapid change in their pensionable age when they might have made decisions about caring and occupation in anticipation of an earlier pension age. They talked about the need for health and strength to be an effective carer and the insidious nature of caring—the way in which it can lead to so much tiredness and often depression. They said: ““Adrenalin keeps us going when we are caring. But sometimes when our caring responsibilities end, that is the moment when we ourselves begin to experience health problems which we have been storing up during those caring years””. These are people who have saved the country huge amounts of money through giving up their own occupation and their own time to care and support more vulnerable members of their families. I appreciate that, in a good carers strategy, it might well be that welfare reform will attend to carers’ needs. What they would have liked as carers is a flexible pension that took account of individual need rather than assuming the same age was right for everybody. However, I support these amendments. The speed of change is too rapid particularly for this very vulnerable group, who represent a significant number of people if it is true that as many as a sixth of this particular age group are at the moment affected or carers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, suggested.