Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:27 pm on 6 March 2018.
Indeed. Well, two very important points indeed. In terms of the art project, I'm delighted to hear that there's a painting going up in her office; I look forward to having a look at it. Of course, it isn't devolved to us, but it impinges on a lot of devolved Government services: employability, social services, caring, and so on. So, what I'll do is I'll have a conversation with various Cabinet colleagues to see what we can do in terms of a cross-Government response to that, and I'd be more than happy to come and look at the painting and have a further discussion with her about what can be done. It seems like a very good project indeed. I'm sure we can do something with it.
In terms of the WASPI women, as they're called, I must declare an interest at this point, Presiding Officer, to say that I'm actually one of the WASPI women. I'm in the age group of the women who've had their pensions moved. Mine's been moved by seven years. And that's fine if you're actually still in employment, but not if you're not still in employment, or your whole family responsibility was predicated on your being able to retire at a particular point in time. The issue isn't that we don't have pension parity, which is what we're often asked. That's not the issue. The issue is the amount of time with which you have to prepare and plan for the amount of income that you'll have. So, it's not the move to parity across the genders; the issue is how long you had to plan for that and how much you would have had to save in order to make sure that your plans stayed in place. I think it's really important to make that point, because the issue here is that was not long enough for people who are not fortunate enough to stay in employment past their sixtieth birthday to be able to put those plans into preparation. And as a result of that, a very large number of people are actually suffering severe hardship as a result of not getting their pension for those years. So, it isn't a devolved matter, but it does impact on our services very, very much. I know that my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport has made our views on the impact on the Welsh economy overall well known. I'm more than happy, as the equalities Minister, to make that point again forcibly to the UK Government.