I supported a motion to make fair transitional state pension arrangements for 1950s women. This meant voting against the Government, not something I make a habit of.
I did it out of loyalty to WASPI campaign and out of support to transitional arrangements which I agree with.
Legislation needs to be fair and proportionate, but these pension changes are unfair and fall disproportionately on a small number of women.
In all my time in the House of Commons, I have never known a debate on the same subject to happen five times in just two months.
I welcomed the proposed transitional measures put forward by the Opposition front benches. They were fraught with problems, but they were a starting point and the one the thing the Government have not done is to come up with some options and offer help to model them. This problem is not going to go away and there is genuine cross party support.
I asked the Minister if he would agree for the Secretary of State to meet a cross party delegation of MPs and key members for the WASPI campaign to come up with some options and cost them, so that we can see some facts and see how practical some of these could be.
We need to send out a strong message to the WASPI women that there has been a disproportionate effect from perfectly well intentioned changes to the pension age. Whilst nobody is disagreeing with the equalisation of the pensionable age, there is a deal to be done, a compromise to be reached and common sense that needs to break out.
The Government needs to listen to all sides of the House and it needs to listen to those women that have been affected most disproportionately. I hope the Minister will take away that message and that we can open up a dialogue because we are talking about real women facing real hardship, after hard working lives doing the sort of things we encourage our constituents to do every day of the week.
