The State Pension Age

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his 'law officer' responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 19 November 2019.

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Photo of David Rees David Rees Labour 2:37, 19 November 2019

Can I join you in sharing the views that we need a Government that will actually respond to these women, who have actually received an injustice? And I'll declare an interest now, in that my wife is one of those women. I'm sure there are many others, and we all appreciate that. The loss of that income is a huge disadvantage. You quite rightly pointed out that many of those women have suffered during their working careers. They weren't allowed to join company pension schemes. They would often work part time and came in at different times because of family commitments in those lives and those times. Things have changed since then, since they were actually starting out in their careers. But you've said you urged—. Can I urge you to actually continue to pressurise the UK Government and look at all avenues possible? If you haven't, find the gap, if you can get involved in this.

And could I also ask you to look to colleagues in your Government, because it's not just about the unfairness to those women in those cases of losing the money, but they are carers, they take on caring responsibilities? That's going to be a burden to this Welsh Government. They take on other duties, which will become a burden to this Welsh Government. Those are huge issues that we haven't yet anticipated the financial outcome of. Will you look at those figures? Would you ask your ministerial colleagues to address the issues of what is going to happen to those women, because they're either not going to work, and therefore there's going to be a situation as to the loss of income for them, and how do we, as the social services, provide the services to them? If they are carers and if they take on work, they lose their caring facilities. How do we provide the care and facilities for them, and the cost of all that? It's a benefit that we have to identify, to tell the UK Government, 'This is costing you not just the money that these women are losing, but the services they are losing as a consequence of that.'