Women Mislead Over Pension
January 17, 2007 12:00 AM
By Lorely Burt MP in Solihull Times - 17th January 2007
By Lorely Burt MP in Solihull Times - 17th January 2007
This week in Parliament we will be debating the Government's Pensions Bill.
Pensions is hardly a burning issue for most people, and the idea of old age is something we put off until retirement becomes a reality.
Although pensions is not my usual area in Parliament, I do speak for women and equalities, and I shall be throwing my two penn'orth into the debate for all the women who have been treated so unfairly by the pensions system we have today.
One in four women pensioners live in poverty, and an average woman's pension is only 57% of an average man's. This is a scandalous way to treat 7 million of our most vulnerable citizens in the fourth richest nation of the world.
The reason for this, however, is not difficult to see. Women have traditionally have taken time off work to raise children and care for elderly or disabled relatives while the traditional male role has been the breadwinner. Women's average earnings have always been lower and more women than men rely on part time work. So too many women have failed to make sufficient years contributions to receive a pension in their own right.
This has been made even worse by bad advice given to so many women that they should pay the reduced 'married women's stamp' because they could always rely on their husband's pension. They discovered too late that they had been misled.
The long awaited Turner Report proposed a citizen's pension where all pensioners would receive a basic state pension. This simple, fair solution was rejected by the government for a more affordable option of reducing the number of contribution years for a Basic State Pension to 30 and restoring the link between pensions and earnings some time between 2012 and 2015.
For today's pensioners, that will be too little too late. Because pensions are currently linked to inflation instead of earnings, by then the value of the basic state pension will have shrunk to just 13% of average earnings and 3 million pensioners will have died with no improvements to their pensions at all.
So on Wednesday's Second Reading and through the Committee Stage of this Bill I'll be batting for the women: to get a fairer deal for those who have sacrificed earnings for caring and who deserve a better reward for this than poverty in their old age.
Lorely Burt MP
Solihull
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