Women and Equalities – in the House of Commons at on 25 January 2023.
What recent assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the gender pension gap.
The primary causes of the gender pension gap are due to the historical inequality of the labour market. This includes differences in working patterns and earnings for men and women. The Government have taken key steps, such as the introduction of shared parental leave, mandatory gender pay gap reporting, and an effort, as we have heard already today, to tackle the root causes of this problem for women. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend Laura Trott is looking directly at this issue for women as well.
It is bad enough that women born in the 1950s were robbed of their pensions, but, more generally, the gender pension gap is significantly larger than the gender pay gap and applies to a significantly large proportion of women in the UK, with retired women more likely to be poorer and more likely to rely on pension credit. That is a problem that persists. Will the Minister urgently address the issue, particularly the injustice suffered by WASPI women, or will her Government just ignore women being poorer in retirement?
I assure the hon. Lady that we will not be doing that. We monitor pension contributions and participation by gender, and publish data regularly through our workplace pension participation and savings trends publication. Key to this matter is our funding of returner programmes, which supports those who have taken time out of the labour market for caring responsibilities. Finally, pension sharing on divorce is an option that can help women if a marriage or civil partnership has broken down. As I have said, this is a focus for us all.