John Hemming MP Demands Pensions Justice for Women and Carers

5.34.06pm GMT Mon 7th Nov 2005

Welcoming the launch of the Women and Pensions Network on Monday 7th November John Hemming is calling for the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to end the failure of the current pension system for women and carers.

John Hemming's call comes after a report published last week by the Department of Work and Pensions showed that only by 2025 will men and women have similar levels of entitlement to the basic state pension, and this is partly because the levels of entitlement amongst men are expected to fall! At present, only 24% of women retiring today are entitled to a full basic State Pension on the basis of their own contributions, compared to just less than 90% of men.

That means that unless there is radical change to the pension system, in Birmingham Yardley most of the 5746 women aged between 45 and 59 are being told that the system will continue to effectively discriminate against them leaving them with poorer pensions when they retire.

John Hemming said:

"These figures show that John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a huge challenge ahead of him.

"For the millions of women already retired and living in poverty because of the injustice of the current pension system and for the millions of women and carers who will be retiring over the next 20 years, urgent and radical action must be taken.

"Rather than continuing to tinker with the system of National Insurance contributions, the Government should establish a Citizen's Pension, where entitlement is based on long-term UK residency."

ENDS

Notes to editors:

Monday, 7th November saw the launch of a new Women and Pensions Network. The alliance includes organisations such as Age Concern, Amicus, Association of British Insurers, Carers UK, Fawcett Society, Help the Aged, Policy Research Institute on Ageing and Ethnicity, T&GWU, TUC, and USDAW. They are calling for a "radical change to address the issue of women's pensions".

John Hutton MP, replaced David Blunkett MP as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last week.

The report Women and Pensions: the evidence is available on the DWP website: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2005/wp/women-pensions.pdf

The estimate that only by 2025 will men and women have similar levels of entitlement to the state pension comes from p.6 of the report.

The figure for the number of women aged between 45-59 comes from Census 2001 - Census Area Statistics.

The pension age for women rises from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2020.