Hutton promises new pensions deal for women

Hutton promises new pensions deal for women

	Published : Fri, 19 May 2006 11:20 By : James Rowe Print this Story

LONDON - Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has promised that women will feature prominently in a White Paper on pensions due to be released shortly. Mr Hutton said that women could look forward to a new deal and would be given better national insurance credits.

"We simply cannot afford to miss this key group...That's why at the heart of next week's reforms will be a new contributory principle that gives women a fairer entitlement to the basic state pension more quickly," Hutton said in a speech. He added that the forthcoming changes will show "that we value social contributions equally with cash contributions and move progressively away from a system predicated on a 19th century view of both working lives and social relationships".

One of the proposals if to include stay-at-home carers in the basic pension scheme by allowing them to accumulate credits on a weekly basis instead of an annual basis as was done previously. This means that women who care for someone 20 hours a week or more would be entitled to a pension. Around 60,000 women are thought to qualify for this premise.

The proposals also vouch for the residency approach as laid down by Lord Turner in his Pensions White Paper last year. Turner had proposed that men and women would make contributions for 30 years instead of 44 years for men and 39 years for women.

Speaking to the Fabian Women's Network, Hutton said that the residency proposals would "offer no immediate help to that core group aged 45 and over, who tend to have poor contribution records and do not now have time to put this right ... we can not afford to miss this key group or indeed to wait that long."

Mr Hutton also claimed that these changes, which will be outlined in the Whit Paper due for release on Thursday, would be "the biggest renewal of our pension system since Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government implemented the Beveridge reforms".