State Pension Age: Women

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:13 pm on 29 November 2017.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of James Cartlidge James Cartlidge Conservative, South Suffolk 4:13, 29 November 2017

I agree with the point of my hon. Friend Mike Wood. The WASPI campaigners are very passionate and tenacious, and one obviously sympathises with those who, having saved all their lives, feel they were not given adequate notice. Obviously there is a legitimate grievance there, but the point is that, as parliamentarians, if we decide to go through a Division Lobby and vote for something—to join a cause, to jump on its bandwagon—we must have a credible, funded policy to stand behind, otherwise we are selling snake oil. Once again, we have it from the SNP. It stills says we can use the national insurance surplus. I will read out a few more written answers about the ability to use the surplus, which is their policy for saving the WASPI women.

In March 2008, the former Minister Mike O’Brien said:

“Any surplus of NICs over social security benefits in any one year…is not…an extra resource available to spend.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 2605W.]

In February 2009, my right hon. Friend Sir Hugo Swire asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer

“what assessment he has made of the merits of using future national insurance fund surpluses to fund an increase in the state pension.”

That was Labour’s policy at the time. Stephen Timms, then a Minister, replied, on behalf of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

“Any increase in the basic state pension has a cumulative impact on Government spending going forward. The Government consider the short-term use of the surplus on the national insurance fund in this way to be unsustainable in the long term.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2009; Vol. 487, c. 1852W.]

That is not least because it has been in deficit and it is cyclical. I think that any of us who claim to support the WASPI women must say which line of taxation, or which line of expenditure, in the Red Book we are prepared to use to pay for this.