Questions to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: 11 July 2016

UKParliament

On Monday 11 July, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions answered questions relating to British pensioners living overseas, auto-enrolment into workplace pensions, and transitional protection for women adversely affected by increases in the state pension age.

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on British pensioners living overseas.

What progress his Department has made on auto-enrolling people into workplace pensions.

If he will make it his policy to introduce transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

What recent representations he has received from the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign; and if he will make a statement.

Watch the debate in full on Parliament TV.

jamesd

"What recent representations he has received from the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign; and if he will make a statement": "The Minister for pensions the noble Baroness Altmann and I recently met with WASPI representatives to listen to their concerns. We made clear the government's position that we will not be unwinding past decisions and that there are no plans to change the policy".

A welcome statement, at least for the majority who post here on this subject.

Added later, this is now in Hansard. consult that for the official record.

jamesd

Partial notes on the earlier questions about transitional protection for women. See the Hansard page for a more complete version, this is just the notes I took while watching.

QUESTION: "If he will make it his policy to introduce transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age."
ANSWER: "Transitional arrangements are already in place. We committed over one billion Pounds to lessen the impact of these changes for those worst affected so that no-one will see their pension age change by more than eighteen months compared to the previous timetable. We have no plans for further changes".

"As far as the proposals that have been put forward are concerned, regrettably they will cost a huge amount of money and therefore we have no plans to go down that route."

QUESTION about a woman losing her job before her state pension age who wants to get her pension early:
ANSWER:"Well I can assure my .. the Honourable Lady that under the coalition government and under the present government we have record levels of employment for women including women who are older and that is something to bear in mind. We are working extensively with employers to make sure that they appreciate the value of older workers and they do and that is why we have record levels of employment particularly for women."

QUESTION: "can I ask my honourable friend to keep an open mind ... Pension Credit arrangements for .. people which are ... means tested and could deal with the worst hardship cases?"
ANSWER: "What I would say to my honourable friend is that we do have particular criteria and ... if people fit that criteria then of course they will qualify for whatever benefit it is that they are seeking guidance on"

QUESTION: "With the imminent takeover of the new Prime Minister who herself falls into the category of women affected by these pension changes wouldn't now be the ideal moment to look again at the various proposals put forward"...
ANSWER: "May I remind the House that in 2012 the DWP did a survey ... only six percent of women who were due for retirement in the next ten years were unaware of the change, an increase, in the pension age and as I said earlier on the government has no plans to review this matter"

For completeness since I'm looking through Hansard, here's the page for the EU portion and for automatic enrolment.

And it does no harm to show that at least some voters do find Hansard of interest...

jamesd

If those questions were of interest you may also find these things of interest as well:

House of Commons Library Number CBP-07405, 6 July 2016 research briefing "Increases in the State Pension age for women born in the 1950s: of particular interest because it gives the cost for women only of undoing the 1995 Act changes at £77 billion just until 2020-21 and without addressing the discrimination issue of increasing he age for men but not for women (page 25).

Freedom of Information request 378/2016: costs for a range of options.

To put the costs into context here are the numbers for 2014-15 from the OBR Welfare Trends Report of June 2015, as a percent of GDP, from the table on page 9:

5.5% state pensions
1.4% housing benefit
1.7% personal tax credits
1.2% disability benefits (DLA, PIP and AA)
0.8% incapacity benefits (incapacity benefit, ESA, SDA and incapacity part of IS)
0.2% income support
0.3% unemployment benefits (JSA)
0.7% child benefit
0.4% other welfare benefits

The total cost of benefits for various years has been this, from chart 2.1 in the spreadsheet:

Year	Nominal	Real	real spend	percent
	 cost	cost	per capita	of GDP
2010-11	199.3	214.4	3416.3		12.6
2015-16	217.2	214.1	3297.7		11.6

To put that £77 billion into context, in 2014-15 total UK government revenue including both Income Tax and National Insurance was about 37.7% of GDP, £648 billion. (page 4).

saver861

jamesd wrote: »

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QUESTION: "With the imminent takeover of the new Prime Minister who herself falls into the category of women affected by these pension changes wouldn't now be the ideal moment to look again at the various proposals put forward"...

ANSWER: "May I remind the House that in 2012 the DWP did a survey ... only six percent of women who were due for retirement in the next ten years were unaware of the change, an increase, in the pension age and as I said earlier on the government has no plans to review this matter"

May I ask the right Honourable Gentleman why he is quoting that only 6% of women due for retirement in the next ten years were unaware of the increase?? I don't doubt the facts of that statement.

However, its that ten years thing again, you see.

Heres the thing Mr Right Honourable Gentleman ....... many of the 50's women did not get ten years notice .....

Once again, ten years is the yardstick being used as an acceptable time scale, but, those that had much less than that, as per the 2011 change, have to suck it up it seems.

jamesd

Just to be clear, I'm not a member of the Privy Council, for which the honorific Right Honourable is used.

He was presumably using ten years because that is the period that some who want more measures have been using, so he addressed their specific claim. Responding to a claim is not evidence of a view that the claim is correct.

saver861

jamesd wrote: »

Just to be clear, I'm not a member of the Privy Council, for which the honorific Right Honourable is used.

Thanks for pointing that out .... everyone should be clear on that one now!

I was referring to the Right Honourable dude that gave the answer ....

jamesd wrote: »

He was presumably using ten years because that is the period that some who want more measures have been using, so he addressed their specific claim. Responding to a claim is not evidence of a view that the claim is correct.

The current situation is that ten years is deemed the minimum acceptable notice ... the dude referred to this in his answer ... but many did not get anything near ten years notice ...

That's called presenting the facts as it suits .....

jamesd

saver861 wrote: »

The current situation is that ten years is deemed the minimum acceptable notice

Well, that's the sort of assertion that he presumably had in mind when mentioning ten years, whether he agreed with the assertion or not.

saver861

jamesd wrote: »

Well, that's the sort of assertion that he presumably had in mind when mentioning ten years, whether he agreed with the assertion or not.

But the survey says ..... sounds a bit like Family Fortunes here ...

.... the DWP survey asked those with ten years from retirement ... not sure why they were asking those ten years from their pension age, other than its the relevant time required ..... which many of those 50's women did not get such notice from the 2011 act ....

jamesd

Thanks, I don't know why that survey picked ten years. Perhaps just a convenient round number. (shrug). Have you seen any reasoning behind why ten years was chosen specifically for that survey?

bigadaj

jamesd wrote: »

Thanks, I don't know why that survey picked ten years. Perhaps just a convenient round number. (shrug). Have you seen any reasoning behind why ten years was chosen specifically for that survey?

Ten years is logical for a survey if you consider ten years to be the minimum period for notification of changes, so people within that time period should en aware of teh ch ages you would whe thought. There's an argument that if they aren't aware then the ten years notice is somewhat flawed though.