Stephanie Dearden
Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Tooting
Tel: 020-7771-2551 or 07985649807
PRESS RELEASES
Monday, 07th November 2005
LibDems Demands
Pensions Justice for Women and Carers
Welcoming the launch of the Women
and Pensions Network on Monday 7th November
Liberal Democrats are calling for
the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to end the failure of the
current pension system for women and carers.
The 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 Tooting most of the 5,794 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.
Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Tooting, Stephanie Dearden 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.
Stephanie Dearden
Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Tooting
Notes to editors