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Pensions Bill

Like the noble Lord, Lord Freud, and my noble friend Lord McKenzie, I, too, pay a very warm and genuine tribute to Evelyn Arnold. When, back in 1997, I was trying to put women’s pensions on the political agenda, I remember being told by one Minister in the Government—we were preparing a Green Paper on pensions and I wanted a chapter on women’s pensions—that they did not think there was anything to write about, so they did not want the chapter, but Evelyn was always a wise, staunch and fair support in ensuring that whenever we considered pensions, we ensured that the gender filter was put up in ways that were appropriate to the pension issues we faced. All of us who have been at the receiving end of her guidance are warmly appreciative of it. We all appreciate the moves the Government have made so far. We all absolutely understand the dilemma that the Minister believes he faces: that he cannot go any further because in his view the equality directive, requiring equal treatment between men and women, takes precedence over the need to be fair to this group of women in particular. He is seeing the one against the other and believes that protecting women, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie argued in his eloquent opening speech, would mean that the rise in men’s pension age would be delayed and therefore that the cost is unaffordable. Also, goes his legal advice, we should treat men and women equally on pension age, even though through most of their working lives they have had very unequal treatment and experiences. One of the things that struck me going into government after being in local government was that whereas local government lawyers sought to enable you to deliver your policy objectives, central government lawyers were charming, but conservative and often unhelpful, and the more unhelpful they were, the more charming they were. Discussing the equal treatment directive over the weekend with a solicitor friend who specialises in the equality directive, his immediate response was that this is ““gold-plated conservativism””. The Minister said that if we tried to follow the principle in the original amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Greengross—to separate the timetable for women from that for men, which would deliver an objective we could all share and produce most of the savings that the Government want—it would risk breaching the European directive. He did not say that it would do so, but that there would be a risk. My solicitor friend told me that, on the contrary, it is for member states, not the EU or any other body, to determine the timetable for equalisation. The advice I was given was that there is no good reason why we should not pursue this detachment of women’s equalisation from men’s in the way that my noble friend’s amendment would allow as a fallback if we cannot defer men’s pension age along with that of women. I think the Minister still has time to be brave. I think he has gone some way, and we understand the pressures he is under and appreciate what he has done so far, but what is the risk? If the advice I have received does not hold up, then women will be no worse off than they are now, but the Government, this House and women out there will know that the Government have made their best endeavours to deliver a fairer deal for women. If it does hold up, and I think there is a reasonable case that it could, some of the poorest women will have been treated fairly and decently. We know that at the moment women are carrying the burden, as my noble friend so rightly said, of benefit cuts, job cuts and public service cuts and many will now face extra conditionality—which appals me, actually—under universal credit. We have to come back to that because too many women will not have the resilience or the capacity to cope with the new burdens that the Government are putting on them at the time that they face the cuts agenda that the Government are also introducing. That is unfair. It is about political choices. I need only remind the House of the up to £8 billion that goes on the additional cost of higher rate tax relief for pensions to realise that there are still plenty of choices if the Government choose to make them or seek them. I support my noble friend’s amendment warmly. I hope that, at the very least, the Government will consider the original purport of the compromise amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. I understand where the Minister is coming from and am grateful for even that which he has done, but we should go further, and could go further, at reasonable cost, by deferring the equalisation issues until after we have protected women who are at the receiving end of most of this Government’s most savage cuts.