 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 15784, in the name of Sandra White, on the war-speak campaign. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Can I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now? I know that I have a lot of members who want to speak in this debate. I am going to leave four minutes for open speeches, but I have to be quite tight because I know that there is a reception afterwards along with other receptions. I do not want to hold it up, so at some point we will have to extend the debate and let you know, but it is a crisp four minutes. I am sure that you can all manage that apart from the openers and the closers. I call on Sandra White to open the debate, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I also thank the MSPs for signing this motion, enabling it to take place at the debate tonight. I also thank my co-convener on the cross-party group WASPY, Jackie Baillie, for her support throughout the meetings that we have had. I also thank the WASPY campaigners for their dogged determination in highlighting this very serious injustice facing women born in the 1950s. I was going to say that some of them are here in the gallery tonight, but the gallery is full of WASPY women. Thank you so much for coming up. I think that that shows how important the debate and the subject are to all of the women in Scotland and beyond. I thank you very much for coming along here tonight. We have a reception, as the Presiding Officer already said, and I look forward to meeting with you all after the debate. This is not the first time, Presiding Officer. I have had the opportunity to bring this important issue to the chamber in 2017. I held a member's debate, and yet here we are in 2019, and the WASPY women's situation has not changed at all. Indeed, the situation for these women has, in fact, got worse, thanks to further Tory austerity cuts to benefits for those who need them the most. Presiding Officer, this issue affects hundreds of thousands of women. It is estimated that no less than 250,000 women will be affected here in Scotland alone, and yet the situation remains the same, no justice so far. No one disagrees that there should be equalisation with the state pension. What we do disagree with and what is so damaging is the way that the changes have been implemented, accelerating the pension's 2011 act timetable for women's state pension in such a short space of time and, in many cases, with no notification of changes at all—no letter, no notification. It is not only just, but it is causing severe financial and emotional hardship for women caught up in the legislation. They simply have not been given the opportunity to put in place adequate financial measures to compensate for the shortfall. I have heard, as I am sure many members across the chamber have heard, stories that illustrate the appalling situation that those women and their families are facing. To add even further hardship, the Tory Government is further penalising those women and their families with the draconian reforms to a welfare system cutting pension credit. The following stories, which I am about to mention, have taken people's names out at their request, and I am certain that they will be familiar to many members. The first story that is not a story—it is an actual—happened. My own story is that I was born in mid-October 1954, and I have worked since I was 15. Six months before I was 60, I contracted viral meningitis. I decided not to burden my employer and take early retirement. It was only after the paperwork was signed that my sister, who volunteers for CAB—not early retirement, 60 years of age, she was just coming on to—it was only after the paperwork was signed that my sister, who volunteers for CAB, informed me that I would not get my state pension until I was 66. I paid 43 years—this is very important—to pay 43 years national insurance, and I feel that this is a total injustice that I have to wait—not 18 months, but an extra six years—to get my state pension. Another person told me that, due to life circumstances, I was unable to join the superannuation scheme until 2004. In 2005, I received a letter stating that I would not be eligible to my pension until I reached the age of 66. I worked for the NHS from 1986 and paid my national insurance, again, since I was 16. In 2014, I developed pantheriatic cancer. I have since undergone surgery, chemotherapy and have no doubt that it will return. Therefore, I had to leave my post with the NHS and retire early due to my ill health. I fear that by the time I reach the age of 66, it will sadly be too late for me to even receive my pension that I paid into for 40 years. Those are the shocking lived experience testments from women across the country, and I am almost certain that other members will have examples of the impact those changes are having on their constituents, such as women who are unable to work as they care for elderly ill parents or are suffering from ill health themselves. Women being forced to take jobs that are inappropriate for the state of health to qualify for limited job seekers allowance and then enduring humiliated tests, otherwise they will face sanctions. Forced to take jobs, place them in a worse financial situation, particularly in zero-hour contracts. Single, divorced, widded women often have no other sources of income, and we know that because those people have turned up at our cross-party groups. Women who are planned and safe for the retirement are living on dwindling limited savings until they reach their new state pension. When the only income that we have left will be their state pension, UK Government ministers have quick to defend their position by citing life expectancy statistics on the increase. I am sure that they know that. It is not news to us. Those who are living in Glasgow, the latest research shows that Glasgow has the lowest life expectancy with women on average living to 78, so tell that to them. Pensions are being hit under Tory austerity cuts. UK has the lowest state pension in the developed world and the UK Government are robbing the lowest earners of vital funds in the retirement. I say this and I do not say it once, I say it all the time when I am speaking to most women and others. The state pension is not a privilege, not a benefit, it is a contract entered into by hard-working women with the UK Government, and the UK Government has reneged on that contract. We must simply constantly say that. It is not a benefit. That is why a whole heartedly support the Waspie campaign and its call to the UK Government to provide a bridging pension that supplies an income until state pension age, which does not mean tested, as well as compensation for the absence of a bridging pension through those who have already received the state pension age, compensation to all those who have not started to receive a bridging pension by an appropriate date, which would be sufficient to recover lost monetary interests and compensation to the beneficiaries of the states of those who are deceased, like the lady I was talking about, and fail to receive a bridging pension. That is justice and fairness, and that is what waspy women want and waspy women are entitled to. Now into the open debate, speeches of a type 4 minutes, Michelle Ballantyne, followed by Annabelle Ewing, Ms Ballantyne. I want to start my contribution to this debate by acknowledging that all the women affected by the pension changes have every right to feel disappointed, angry and aggrieved at the impact on their lives. I understand and empathise with their arguments, particularly as they face significant barriers to work and workplace rights during their working lives. I believe that there was a failure in communication when the changes were accelerated. However, as I only have four minutes, I want to focus on the position that we are in as I understand it. I think that it is important to reflect that we are discussing a course of action that has its roots in the European Court of Justice as part of a drive to ensure equal pay for men and women, a sensible necessary move, as I am sure many in this chamber will agree. Life expectancy was changing, positive changes meant that people were living longer and the pension system was experiencing increasing demands. The pensions act 2011 was passed in the heat of the financial crisis and with very real concerns in mind. All of us would no doubt agree that a pension system is only effective if it is sustainable, and if it is not sustainable it will do little good. With a £26 billion increase set for the state pension, some action had to be taken in the face of the risks that future generations would receive nothing at all. The motion calls for the UK Government to provide a bridging pension, and I have asked about those options. It is my understanding that the UK Government has fully explored the options available to mitigating this change, showing that they do realise that while change was necessary, as was the acceleration of the timetable, advocate communication might not have been made to some women, something that the Work and Pensions Committee has confirmed. However, as the Secretary of State said last month, the DWP—I have not got time, I have only got four minutes—has found that there are substantial, practical, financial and legal problems to all alternative options that have been suggested. Perhaps the greatest barrier to mitigation is reversing the 2011 state pension age changes that would cost over £30 billion up to the end of 2025-26, while returning to female state pension age would cost over £77 billion by 2021. There are also legal issues to be considered here. There is a high risk that, if the UK Government was to acquiesce to calls for a bridging pension, it would in fact find itself in contravention of CEDOR, the convention of the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, which insists on parity between men and women when it comes to pay. After all, that was the initial purpose of the change. Such a move might also bring the UK into conflict with EU law, particularly the ECJ decision that sparked the process of pension equalising across Europe. Interestingly, if the Scottish Government were at least to ratify CEDOR and it is disappointing that it has not done so, it could also potentially find themselves bound by the same legal constraints and would be unable to reverse or mitigate the changes for risk of falling foul of equality's discrimination. I have noted when there has been conversations about this and in the meeting I went to that the Cabinet Secretary at the time was quick to say that Scotland could not afford to support those changes and would fall foul of the law if it did so. Personally, Presiding Officer, I think it is important that we wait for the result of the case brought to the High Court. The DWP has temporarily suspended action on state pension age matters until that judicial review is complete. I think that the results of the legal action will provide us with a useful litmus test on which options the Government should pursue. Bearing that in mind, it is clear that the UK Government will not make any decision until that review has gone through the courts, and that should be considered in any cause to action. While I recognise the issue, I think that if we are going to act on behalf of the women effectively, we need to wait until that court case has gone through and then look at it as a result of what they say. Thank you very much. I call Annabelle Ewing to be followed by Pauline McNeill, Mr Ewing, please. I am pleased to have been called to speak in this important member's debate tonight on the on-going plight of women born in the 1950s, affected by chains to UK state pension provision. I also wish at the outset to congratulate my colleague Sandra White MSP for securing this timely debate and for her tireless work over the years to secure justice for these women. I would also take this opportunity to mention my Westminster colleague, Mary Black MP, who I believe is a real heron of this campaign. I would like to commend the work of the West 5 women against state pension and justice. The group has also campaigned tirelessly to see that justice be done and has helped to ensure that the issue remains very much at the forefront of debate. I too welcome all our guests, all these fabulous women campaigners, to the gallery tonight. As we have heard, the problem stems from the fact that the UK Government accelerated the increase of the state pension age for women born in the 1950s. While it is true that there was a lead-in time for the changes, none the less nobody knew about the changes. Indeed, the first letters were not sent out until 2009, some 14 years after the 1995 act that introduced them. In the intervening years, the DWP even sent out letters about the state pension to these women without even bothering to mention that they would not be getting their pension at age 16. Of course, the 2011 legislation and the accelerations involved therein simply exacerbated the problems. Regrettably, it has to be said that the UK Government has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to even recognise that the problem exists. The social contract with the state that state pensions represent is a social contract that involves paying into the system over many years through national insurance contributions. It is a social contract that means that there is an entitlement and a legitimate expectation of an entitlement that, upon reaching a certain age, the state pension will be paid. Planning is made on this basis, and family commitments and aspirations are dealt with on this basis. For the UK Government to pretend otherwise just shows how out of touch they are. Indeed, how are those women supposed to build up the necessary resources to replace the state pension that they will not now receive? Of course, in that regard, for many of those women, they simply do not have private pensions to fall back upon. Tens of thousands of women across Scotland and hundreds of thousands of women across the UK are losing tens of thousands of pounds. The UK Government has pohalled their money, and it is not on. This is the UK Government's mess, and it is therefore incumbent on the UK Government to sort it out. We have to recall, in this respect, when suggestions are made to seek to transfer the responsibility to this place, which has no power over the matter, that it was, of course, the unionist parties—Tory, Labour and Lib Demolite—that have used their best endeavours to ensure that it is indeed the Westminster Parliament that keeps exclusive control over pensions, although presumably not on the grounds that Westminster is actually doing such a good job with the UK state pension being amongst the lowest in Europe, according to the OCD. Those women are fed up with stalling, procrastination, misinformation and, indeed, outright rejection on the part of the UK Government. That is all the more galling, given that the UK Government is currently sitting on a surplus of some £30 billion in the national insurance fund, far in excess of what would be required to sort it out, £8 billion being the current accurate estimate. In that regard, I entirely support the calls for the UK Government to provide those women with a bridging pension, so that they will have an income until they reach their state pension age. I also support calls for appropriate compensation to those who would not otherwise benefit from that bridging option. In conclusion, it is time for the UK Government to pay out and to honour the financial debt that it owes. Why won't the UK Government just do the right thing? I call Holly McNeill to be followed by Alec Neill. Thank you to Sandra White for her determination to take this important issue forward, because so few issues have unified women across the country than the scandal of women who were robbed of their pension at 60, a pension that they paid for. The gallery is a site to behold, but, in fact, it was Patricia Gibson's MP in her debate in the Westminster Hall pointed out that it is not about people living longer, as some would have, you believe. It is about women who had their pension age changed with no notice and, further to that, an accelerated timetable in 2011, which brought it forward by nine years. It is the biggest scandal of this decade, and it is a shame that the Tories cannot see through it. The goalposts were moved not just once, but twice. It was a double whammy, so to speak. 65 was the age of equalisation, and then the age of pension has moved up to 67, so those women have had a double whammy in this regard. I personally believe that Westminster robbed those women, and I personally believe that it is Westminster that should pay. That is my view. The equalisation of men and women, rightly so, as Sandra White said, should not have resulted in robbing women of their later years in life, because, if I ask the majority of those women, they started work at age 15 or 16. I have not had the educational opportunities that maybe younger women have. They were carers, mothers, worked part-time and probably on the lowest levels of pay, and they have been rewarded with a baseball bat across their entitlement. George Orr's Bond, when he was chancellor, told a global investment conference in 2013 that raising women's pension age was one of the less controversial things that we have done, and he went on to say that it probably saved more money than anything else that we have done. Today, women around the country are making it clear that that will never be forgotten. It was Baroness Altman who said that the Pensions Minister, Ian Duncan-Smith, refused to engage with her, saying that she was not to speak to the women because they would go away. Stella Taylor, born in 1955, said that she worked all her life. She became unwell at age 58 and discovered quite accidentally that her state pension that she expected to receive at age 60 would be moved six years to 66. Sandra White recalls the same type of story. That is not uncommon, but we need to be clear here. It is a lack of notice that it is the biggest scandal of all women who could not have been able to be prepared for their retirement years. Steve Webb, another former pension minister, acknowledged that when we wrote to people or women for the first time to let them know of the changes that they were working in an additional year, he admitted that probably it was the first time that many of those women realised that they were working for an extra six years. As has been said by Annabelle Ewing, until the 1990s, women were not allowed to join their company pension schemes. Women faced returning to work in difficult times. I think that a lack of age-friendly policies in the workplace is certainly going to be a factor. Some divorce settlements have actually been calculated using women's projected incomes that they might have received at their pension at age 60. They cannot reverse the clock on that one. The Government could find the money to bail out the bankers, so I think that it is time that the Government found the money to pay those women their pensions. I do not think that we should lose sight of the issue of pensions being a wider issue, not just for the worst-be women but for a wider society. The age of pension retirement has gone up. We have not had much of a say in that. We need to educate people on how important their pension is to them. It is their deferred pay. It is money that they have paid into the state or their pension scheme. They need to be sure that whatever the state age of retirement is that they have had a say in it. Pay the worst-be women what they are doing, back the worst-be women. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First of all, I declare an interest in the sense that my wife is a waspy. Secondly, I want to pay tribute to Sandra White for not only getting this debate but for so persistently campaigning along with others on this issue. It is a great pity that the decision does not lie with this Parliament because I am absolutely sure that if it was this Parliament that was dealing with this issue and had responsibility for it, it would never have happened and had we inherited this problem, we would have sorted it long before now. It has been said about the failure in communications. I think that it was a terminology used by Michelle Ballantyne in the failure of the UK Government to tell those women that they were going to have to wait so much longer to get the pension to which they were entitled. I do not call it a failure in communication. I call it deliberate deception of these women and trying to undermine their right to the pension that they have paid for. I just say gently to Michelle Ballantyne that I have been in this chamber for 20 years and I have never heard so much rubbish in one speech as I have heard in hers. To say that this is because of the financial hardship, I remember Cameron and Osborne telling us that we were all in it together. We were all in it together. Cameron, who is already worth an estimated £10 million and is reputedly about to make about another £3 million or £4 million in his memoirs, has got about 100 different jobs totaling millions of pounds every year. Nobody is delaying the payment of their pension. Nobody is punishing them for the damage that they have done to those women and, indeed, wider pensioners, because Pauline is right that there is a wider debate. They say that they do not have the money to pay for it. That is not true. Pension tax relief is worth £45 billion, £1 billion every year. Most of that goes to something like 10 per cent of the wealthiest people in the country. If they get the same tax relief as the rest of us, the money is there to pay the waspy women many times over. It is not a fair or accurate argument to say that the money is not there. The money is there if the will is there, but that has been introduced by people who want to keep the wealthy wealthy and deprive people who have been working all their lives of the pension to which they are entitled. As Annabelle Ewing has already pointed out, there is a £30 billion surplus in the national insurance fund. Over the years, £8 billion is perfectly affordable, both from taking from the richer people to give to the waspy women and using some of the surplus that is there to pay out compensation. This is not just about politics or economics. This is about morality in public life. Those women are being denied their money. It is not someone else's money. The whole point of the contributory system is that you pay in during your working life, and when you expect to, you get the pension from the age that you have been told to get it from. That was the deal, and the deal has been broken in respect of the waspy women. Let me finish at this point. Our pensioners, relative to average wages, are the poorest paid in the whole of Europe. That should not just be, although it is primarily about the waspy women. The fact of life is that our pensioners in the fifth largest economy in the world are living in poverty compared to our European brothers and sisters. As high time, all our pensioners, especially the waspy women, have the justice that they are entitled to. I call Alison Johnstone to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Alex Neil is absolutely right. If anyone was under the impression that this Conservative Government were working hard on behalf of pensioners, I think that myth has been well and truly bussed. I thank Sandra White for giving us another opportunity to highlight the injustices faced by the waspy women and to thank the waspy women, too, for making the issue live for bringing it here. Do not go away. I was glad to be able to debate this issue last year. It is important that we continue to debate it until these wrongs are righted. Millions of women across the UK are retiring much later than they planned. Over a long period, the Department for Work and Pensions and its predecessors repeatedly failed to ensure that women who were affected by changes in the pension age were aware of those changes. Those women were not made aware sufficiently in advance so that they could prepare accordingly. Even worse, the UK Government had opportunities to correct that and did not. For instance, a DWP survey in 2004 found that while 73 per cent of female respondents set to be affected by equalisation were aware of it, only 43 per cent were aware of their own pension age. It also found that awareness of that pension age was lower in certain groups, including women who carry out unpaid work and women who carry out poorly paid manual work—the very groups that are least able to cope financially with having to work many years longer at short notice. The survey found that just 2 per cent of those who knew about those changes were made aware through DWP and pension service communications, so the UK Government knew fine well that its message was not getting out. The DWP concluded that the low figure provides cause for concern and shows that information about the increase in state pension age is not reaching the group of individuals who arguably have the greatest need to be informed. Why, then, was that not acted upon? Why did the UK Government wait until 2009 to send out personalised letters to the women who were affected by informing them of their changed retirement age? If the DWP knew, as it has admitted, that letters are only read by one in three recipients that people were not getting them because they changed their address, why was more effort not made to contact the women concerned? The common select committee report concluded that Governments could have done a lot better in communicating the changes. Well into this decade, far too many affected women were unaware of the equalisation of state pension age at 65, legislated for in 1995, over 15 years later. Despite the fantastic work being done by the Wasby campaign, even now, still too many women across the UK, too many people, are not aware of their state pension age, and it certainly is not up to the Wasby women to make people aware. Clearly, there was a major failure to properly inform the 1950s women of changes in their retirement age, and that is why the motion is absolutely right to support Wasby's requests for bridging pensions and other forms of compensation. However, let's look at pension credit now. That is another injustice that will mean that some of the Wasby women are being hit again. From May, mixed-age couples where one partner is below the pension age will no longer be able to receive pension credit. Both people will have to claim universal credit, that great success story. Couples that claim after 15 May could be as much as £140 a week or £7,000 a year worse off. That will make it even harder for Wasby women to get by. Particularly disappointing is that, as Age Scotland argues, rather than making sure that everyone is aware of this big change, it has been on the statute book since 2012 but not implemented. The announcement was weighed quietly through a ministerial statement on a busy day in the UK Parliament. Clearly, lessons have not been learned. Greens congratulate the Wasby campaign on the incredible work that it has done so far in erasing awareness of justice and fully backs its calls for bridging pensions and compensations to right this wrong. If I could just close on this, Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on poverty, he previously concluded, looking at UK welfare reform, that some of them could have been written in a room full of misogynists. I would say that this is another such example. Thank you very much. I call Stuart McMillan to be followed by Tavish Scott. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. First of all, I congratulate my friend and colleague Sandra White for securing this important debate. I also want to highlight the fact that I think that it is appalling that, in 2019, this debate is still taking place and this fight and this campaign is still taking place. With that, I want to thank all the Wasbywomen who are here in the Parliament today, but also all the Wasbywomen over the last number of years who have campaigned so tirelessly on this particular issue. Michelle Ballantyne in her opening comments clearly has a different political aspect of this, and that is understandable, bearing in mind her political party. She spoke about the Pensions Act 2011. She stated that it was completed through the heat of the financial situation, but with that being the case, if it was done through the heat of the financial situation and most people recognise that the situation is a bit different now, then why hasn't it been revisited to be fixed, to fix the problem for all the Wasbywomen in the Scottish Parliament today? Politicians from the pro-Union side of the constitutional debate have proposed and argued that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament have the powers to do something about the Wasbyw situation, even suggestions to top up the pensions. I want to tell you a few things. I think that those suggestions are disingenuous. First, if the system is wrong, and it needs to be topped up, then it has that shortfall, it then needs to be fixed. Secondly, women are being targeted by the Tory UK Government to make up for their own Government's mistakes. Thirdly, the Scottish Parliament does not have the powers, so any indication by politicians is misleading, and doing the Wasby campaign is yet another injustice on top of that already inflicted. Gillian Martin. Does the member agree with me that it was, in fact, not a mistake but a strategy to slip it under the wire so that women wouldn't actually take to the streets ahead of the decision, and it was probably a strategy to get women to not realise that supporting the Tory party was a mistake? Stuart McMillan. I absolutely agree with Gillian Martin. The fourth point is that, in 2014, the population of Scotland was told that a vote to remain in the UK would actually protect pensions and guarantee pensions. Clearly, among other things, that was not the case, including voting that no one would safeguard Scotland's membership of the European Union. Then it was another false claim by the pro-union side. Some MSPs will suggest that the Scottish Government should put those top ups in. Section 26 of the Scotland Act 2016, in the aspect regarding the powers limited to short-term needs that need to be met to avoid the risk of a person's wellbeing, indicates that each person would need to be assessed to get that done. Section 28, the exception 10 of the 2016 Scotland Act once again is about the creation of new benefit. The power states that it cannot be used to provide pensions to people who qualify by reason of old age. Section 24, the exception 5 once again of the 2016 Scotland Act, the top-up of reserved benefits. That is a so-called wide-ranging power to make discretion payments. However, in order for that to apply in this case, people must already be receiving a reserved benefit so that it can be topped up. Clearly, in the case of the worst women, they have been denied that, which is rightfully theirs, so they are not getting that pension. How can they actually get a top-up of something that they are not getting? Some politicians will claim that this is not a constitutional issue, and neither it should be. However, when a system is broken and we are being asked to pick up the pieces by applying an imaginary top-up that we are not allowed to apply, it could well be claimed that the worst women will not be getting what is rightfully theirs until some MSPs and some pro-union parties admit to where the problem lies, and that is Westminster. I agree with Pauline McNeill in her comments earlier. I am sure that every MSP will want to support and ensure that Scotland's waspy women get what is rightfully theirs, because they have put in to that pot. Thank you very much. I call Tabis Scott, who will be followed by Gil Paterson. I reassure my good friend, Alex Neil, that David Cameron will never make £3 million off his memoirs, because not even the Tory group is going to buy it. I thank Sandra White for her powerful advocacy on behalf of waspy women, and Jackie Baillie for her work on my cross-party group that is supported by so many colleagues across the chamber. When the state chooses to change the pension age, people who are affected by that change have a right to understand why and, indeed, to be fully consulted on that change. Why, then, is it that the waspy women so understandably are aggrieved by the changes that now directly affect them? Why is a landmark judicial ruling expected later this year so eagerly awaited? Why does the redoubtable Janet Ainsworth lead a public demonstration at the south lochside roundabout in Llarwick every Saturday at noon, no matter the weather? Janet and women like her have formed the Shetland Justice pension group, have a Facebook page to prove it so that people can keep in touch, not just across Shetland but the widespread campaigns across the nations of the United Kingdom. Why have more women attended meetings hosted by Alistair Carmichael in recent weeks in both Orkney and Shetland than on any other major issue? Because this generation of women speak about being robbed, robbed of their money from their hard work, from their service, from their rights. Shetland women talk about losing sight and touch in retirement with their loved ones, of not being able to be a granny, of having to make a choice between giving up work, often to care for loved ones, and taking a drop in the hours that they work with a financial shortfall that means for the household. Why was there no direct consultation with women affected by these pension changes? Would it have been so difficult? For these and many other reasons, this issue does need to be addressed. It cannot be right that a legal case is the only potential solution that 3,000 women in Shetland and Orkney alone will see to right this wrong. Annabelle Ewing mentioned that these pension changes make women tens of thousands of pounds worse off, money that could be spent on many household things, not least of which heating the home. Elderly people are particularly affected by fuel poverty, and Shetland spends more per household on heating and keeping warm than most of Shetland. That is even more so for people in elderly households. The cost of living on the 1950s generation of women is 20 to 60 per cent higher in the islands than the UK average. State pensions do not include such geographic variations. The Shetland population is aging faster than the rest of Scotland. 90 per cent of the island's population is over 65, and 4 per cent more than a decade ago. Women in their 60s care for their elderly spouses and parents. Many look after the next generation, especially those with disabilities. They have been described as the sandwich generation. In Shetland that might be better termed the Banach generation. No matter the title, Janet Ainsworth deserves better. The Shetland pension justice group deserves better. The 1950s generation of women deserves better. It is time that happened. Thank you very much. Now, before I call Gil Paterson, since I've got six members still wishing to speak, I'm minded to accept a motion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. Could I invite Sandra White to move that motion without notice? The question is that the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you very much. I now call Gil Paterson to be followed by Jackie Baillie. Many thanks, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, it's really good that so many members have stayed back and are making a contribution to this debate, which is of enormous importance not only to women but to their families and indeed the family's wellbeing. When I was in my late teens, my mother and father would continually election me on the need to provide myself with adequate life insurance and, secondly, a pension. Although they were by no means well off themselves, nevertheless, that was always a priority for them and they encouraged me to follow suit. Of course, when you are young, those things seem a long way off and to be a little of no relevance and certainly not at the front of your priorities. However, in my case, I was glad that I listened to them. Although that was more to keep them happy than to think that it was the right thing to do, it was not until my late 20s that I fully understood why and to appreciate the security that that provided not just for me but the family that I now had being married with a child. I was thinking back, if the truth be known, that the fact that week after week, month by month, year by year, I was contributing to the national insurance scheme and knowing that there was a time when the Government of the day would make good its promise of a state pension was something that you had in the bank that was secure. That worked against the notion of being bothered of any additional provision for your retirement. The date of retirement for everybody was a definite and it was certain. Since it was the Government who were the public providers, that was considered as rock solid. Bringing matters forward until date today, when we find that we are in a situation, particularly for women, who all their lives have planned and taken for granted, that what they have been working for and what they were promised and what, indeed, they were titled to has been taken away from them, not by a callous private provider but by their own Government, breaking contract without any redress of any kind. Just think what would have happened if a rogue private provider at the end of the contract said, we have ripped up the agreement, we have ignored the deal, we have taken your payment, we have unilaterally extended the date when we will pay out, presiding officer of the roof with a collapsed in on them. The fact that this is the UK Government who have acted in this unilateral way and stolen pensions rights from WASP women does not make it acceptable. The fact that the UK Government has brought in legislation to make this theft legal does not make it just. The fact that the UK Government has the power to act in this reprehensible way does not make it honest. Presiding officer of the effects on women's wellbeing by the impact of measures is and will continue to be profound. It is time for the UK Government to recognise the damage that has been done and to reverse this mean-hearted measure and restore trust in the pension system. It is time to restore pensions rights for all affected women and support WASP women. Thank you very much. I now call Jackie Baillie to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would also like to thank Sandra White for bringing this debate to the chamber. I know that the fight for state pension equality is one that we both care a great deal about as co-conveners of the cross-party group. I would also like to welcome the WASP campaigners from my constituency and indeed across Scotland, who are here in the chamber this evening. I encourage colleagues to come and meet them after this debate to learn more about the impact on them and what each one of us can do to help with the campaign. Over 2.5 million women born in the 1950s have had their state pension age changed without fair notification. In fact, it is probably true to say for many without any notification at all. Those women deserve recognition for the injustice that they have suffered and apology for the way their complaints have been handled and compensation for their loss. As I am sure that WASP campaigners would point out themselves, there is an argument to be had about the 1995 State Pension Act and equalising retirement at 65. However, it is the completely unreasonable way that those changes were implemented that have meant that millions of women across the country are being discriminated against based purely on the year that they were born. They rightly feel robbed. That is their entitlement. They have paid into their pensions all their working lives. The almost complete lack of notice given to those women—over a quarter of a million of whom live in Scotland—has resulted in many of them experiencing significant financial hardship. They have had no time at all to plan for their retirement. That was despite calls from the Turner commission that said that at least a 10 to 15-year notice period was required. However, to really add insult to injury, a recent freedom of information request found that just three people at the DWP have been given the job of dealing with the thousands of complaints from women who have unfairly missed out on their pensions. That is downright offensive to the millions of women who have spent their working lives contributing to our country and shows that the Tory Government has a complete lack of understanding as to the issue at hand. Women up and down the country are being forced to wait for significant periods of time to even have a complaint answered that they should never have had to make in the first place. The independent case examiner was set up to deal with waspy complaints. I welcome the fact that they have assessed around 400 cases for examination and have investigated over 40 cases. Between October 2017, when they were created, and February 2018, fewer than 44 investigation reports into complaints were issued, and the number of published reasons are stagnating due to the size of the backlog of complaints. At that point, there were still over 2,000 cases that had not yet seen the light of day. I understand that there are many, many more since. At the time of the freedom of information request, it was calculated that, if the DWP keep up their average reply time of 9.75 weeks per case, it would be over 20 years before all 2,000 odd cases are examined. That, frankly, is a disgrace. That is a fight that could have been avoided. The Government failed to give those women due respect. The time, energy and money that waspy women have given to this campaign has been recognised both in this UK Parliament and just three weeks ago, the waspy campaign won the Sheila McKechnie Foundation grassroots action support award for specialist lobbying, and I congratulate them for that. I had pleasure in organising a meeting for waspy women in Dumbarton to which hundreds upon hundreds of women came. In closing, I want to congratulate my local waspy groups in Argyll and Bute and Westumbarton, and I stand side by side with them to address the injustice that they have experienced, and I encourage everyone in this chamber to join the fight. Waspy women deserve justice. Thank you very much, Ms Whaley. Paul Coot and MacGregor, to be followed by Neil Bibby. Mr MacGregor, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I add my gratitude to Sandra White for securing this very important debate on behalf of waspy women throughout Scotland. I also just comment, as others have, and acknowledge her fight and her determination in particular in this area. I can also thank the waspy women who are in the gallery tonight, who are only a small fraction of the women across Scotland affected. I thank you for all that you do for women across Scotland and the UK, including many in my own family who are affected by this. I am sorry to say that I will start by saying that Michelle Ballantyne, I do not know whether to feel sorry for her or not. Here she is sent out by the Conservative party to put on the face and defend the UK Government flanked by the land owning gentry at each side of her, who are unlikely to be affected by those changes. I have to say that her speech was a disgrace and she should have turned round and faced the gallery, because this subject is yet another example of how Westminster simply does not work for Scotland. The vast majority of Scottish MSPs and MPs oppose the strategy that has been adopted by the UK Government and the devastating impact that it is having on women up and down the UK. I, like others here, have been contacted by countless women in my constituency who have told me about just how much of an impact the decision has had on them and their families' long-made plans for retirement, thrown into the air by the heartless Tory party. I believe that there is a consensus support for equalising the retirement age. We have heard that from almost every speaker for men and women, but it has to be done in a sensible and fair way to simply dictate to a woman a couple of years before the retire that they will need to work on for several years. More is just not good enough, and that is why I support the calls for a bridging pension and compensation. Just last year, I was privileged to speak at the Glasgow Lanarkshire Wastbury event in Coatbridge, alongside the local MP Labour's Hughes Gaffney. It is important in those issues that the ones of these importance that span the whole country, that party allegiances are put to one side and that all of us stand full square behind the women affected by those changes. Some of the stories that we heard that day were absolutely heartbreaking. I was going against specific examples, but I think that a lot of them have been adequately covered by others. Women who have had to put their plans on hold, holidays and dreams of a lifetime, put on hold plans for their children and grandchildren, financial hardship and much, much more, are absolutely heartbreaking. However, one of the other things that came out of that meeting was how important it was that men also fight injustice. It was not something that I particularly thought about prior to that meeting. We talked about the women in the gallery, and I noticed that there were a couple of men in the gallery as well, but I think that the women there that day were saying that everybody's injustice, and we all need to fight this. That's why I'm glad to see that there's a firstly cross-party, but also lots of men MSPs have spoken in this debate tonight as well. To finish up, this is a national scandal. Blatant discrimination, injustice, misogynistic, gender and age discrimination, and they thought that they could get away with it. However, they've got a bit of a shock there, haven't they? The waspy campaign is to be commended for the way in which it's conducted itself. They should be paid what they are due to support the waspy campaign. Before I call the next speaker, can I say that members should be civil to other members in the chamber and that the members that Mr McGregor referred to are not taking part in the debate? They are supporting another member of their party. I think that you would understand that. I think that it was rather unfortunate the remark that was made then, and I just caution you in the way that you address each other. That's the matter dealt with. I want to hear another thing. Can I now call, please, Neil Bibby to fall by Angus MacDonald? Thank you, Presiding Officer. This debate is about justice and fairness, and I want to thank Sandra White for giving members the opportunity to put on record our support for those women who have been treated so badly. As Sandra White said, the waspy campaign is not about opposition to the equalisation of the pension age or about the state pension age reverting to 60. It is simply a demand for fair transitional arrangements for the many women born in the early 1950s who have been affected by the Pensions Act of 1995 and 2011. Those women were told for the majority of their working life that the state would provide pensions for them at age 60, only for the rug to be pulled from under them. We should remember that the waspy women entered the workforce in an era where sex discrimination was rife. They were often paid less than men for doing the same work, and even the welcome introduction of the Equal Pay Act didn't end that unfairness. Not only did many earn less than men, they often worked in industries where company pensions were either inadequate or non-existent. Even if they were covered by a workplace pension, that pension was badly hit when they took time off to raise their children, because they certainly did not enjoy the current levels of state childcare support, which parents like myself now enjoy. That is a generation of many women who did not have highly paid jobs with gold-plated works pensions. Philip Alston, a UN independent expert, found that waspy women had been particularly impacted by a poorly phased and change in the state pension age and that the number of pensioners living in poverty in the UK had risen by 300,000. I now want to turn to the question of notice. Jackie Baillie and others have said that the Turner commission recommended that 15 years' notice be given. SAGA recommended 10 years. The reality is that many women were not personally notified in 1995 that a huge change was in the pipeline. One of those women was my constituent Anne Ferguson from Cobarken. In 2012, she was told by the DWP that her state pension age had not changed. Then it did to 63.5 years and then to 65 years and three months. She was given no notice to prepare. Anne was lucky in that she could find a job to tide her over, but many others have not been as fortunate. Where is the justice for women receiving letters 14 years after the 1995 Pensions Act? A large percentage only received a letter advising the most significant increases to their pension age when approaching their pension age. Hardly any time to make alternative arrangements, and as many have said, some women report receiving no letter at all. In 2013, as Pauline McNeill said, George Osborne, the then chancellor said that raising women's pension age was one of the less controversial things that we have done and that it probably saved more money than anything else we have done. That comment shows that this was a cold and callous calculation that there was huge savings to be made without provoking a major backlash. What we have here is a scandal of major proportions. It is a sexist one in that it hits women more than men. It hits lower income women disproportionately hard. This is a scandal that could be fixed if there is the political will. As a country, we have rightly had to make financial provisions for the impact of Brexit. In national emergencies, we rightly find the resources to respond. When it comes to war, the money can be found. If we are so minded across the political spectrum, we can come to a pact to say that we will do the right thing. We should listen to the women here in the gallery today and the many thousands more in my community and across the country. We should honour the contribution that those women have made to society and take the necessary steps to deliver the money to address this unfairness and injustice. Thank you very much, Mr Bibby. I call Angus MacDonald, followed by Willie Coffey, who will be the last speaker in the open debate. Mr MacDonald, please. This is an issue that continues to raise its head for all the wrong reasons. First and foremost, I thank Sandra White MSP for once again bringing the serious issue to the chamber for debate. There will not be one of the 129 members in this place that has not encountered the Waspie campaign and the Waspie women within our constituencies and regions over the past few years. Their arguments have remained constant and consistent and have been well rehearsed this evening by previous speakers, so I will not go back over them. Sadly, this is one of a number of unfair and unreasonable policies that are implemented by a Tory UK Government that are continually out of touch, out of luck and are rapidly running out of time. Not only were these changes ineffectively communicated and in many instances not communicated at all, but they are reliant on the women affected remembering whether they have been informed about them over 25 years ago, although I acknowledge that that may not have been the case. That is not just ludicrous, it is completely unreasonable on the UK Government's part to just assume that it is all fine. The sheer ineptitude of this Tory UK Government is quite astonishing. It is wholly unsurprising that it has taken a carry-on regardless approach to this issue, just as we have seen it take with other issues that are coming home to roost. Sandra White's motion today urges the UK Government to provide bridging pensions and compensation to those affected most by those changes, and I believe that that is the very least that the UK Government should be doing. Recognition of their approach to this issue being entirely counterproductive would be a start, and personal apologies to all of those affected would go some way towards rebuilding those burned-down bridges. While those who are living have to bear the brunt of the severe incompetence and intransigence of the UK Government, our thoughts should turn to those who have died waiting on them getting their act together. It is nothing short of a scandal that women across the countries of the UK who have been fighting against state pension inequality have since died waiting for the UK Government to clean up their mess, and they should be utterly ashamed of this harrowing and abhorrent fact. Make no mistake, the hundreds of waspy women in my constituency of Falkirk East and those across the wider Falkirk district have an ally in those benches here to call on the Tories and the UK Government to face up to their own inadequacies and admit that they have failed these women. They need to act upon their failures and find a solution to this going forward, a point that we and the SNP through our Westminster colleagues have been making for some years now. I have little faith in the UK Government to make this happen, however, and I fully believe that if they won't make it happen then they should be giving these powers to the Scottish Government to ensure that it does happen. We often hear cries from the Tory benches about welfare powers, and I would remind them of this. The benefits devolved to the Scottish Parliament still have to fit within the confines of a narrow UK system that is failing our citizens across these countries. The only way forward for Scotland to be able to treat our citizens with dignity, fairness and respect is to take the decisions affecting us most for ourselves. Presiding Officer, in closing we can see that this is a mess created by the UK Government that habitually turned their backs on their own citizens. Governments are supposed to be there to protect and provide for the people. In our experience, however, Tory Governments are only interested in protecting and providing for their own interests. I would add to the calls from this Parliament for the UK Government to get their act together and ensure that Waspie women, who have lost out to date, get the apology and the money that they rightfully deserve. Thank you. Willie Coffey, the last speaker in the open debate, Mr Coffey, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I also thank my colleague Sandra White for securing us debate and representing the case for many thousands of women across Scotland who are being robbed of their pensions by the UK Government. Of course, I welcome the airshare of Waspie women and their families to the Parliament, who have campaigned long and hard to right this wrong. Robbery is the appropriate term here, Presiding Officer, because that is where it is. State-sponsored robbery of some of the poorer people in our society. What has the UK Government's response been? Basically, to do nothing, claim it is too expensive to fix, blame Europe, as we have heard just earlier, and to tell those women, as the working pensions secretary did in December, that they should count themselves lucky because they are receiving more state pension and average over their lifetime than women have ever done before. Across the airshare, Presiding Officer, there are about 14,000 women affected by this, and as a pity they have had no support whatsoever from their Tory MP or MSPs who have thrown them a deaf ear on the whole subject. Personal losses for many are anything in the region of £17,000 all the way up to £45,000 or £50,000. Not forgetting, too, that those people will continue to be required to pay their national insurance well beyond their previously expected years of service contributions. There is something fundamentally wrong about all of this. The Waspie women upheld their end of the pensions contract when working and paying into their state pension all their lives. Surely it is unacceptable for any Government to break that contract for something as crucial as their pension, particularly so close to the point of retire. Despite what the UK Government claimed, those women did not receive any notification regarding changes to state pension age. Therefore, most were shocked to find that they would not receive their state pension until they turned 66. Some of the consequences of this have seen many women having to sell their homes or use up lifetime savings now rather than keep what they had for their well-earned retirement. Many gave up working anticipating their retirement and now have to try to get back into work. Disgracefully, many who gave up work in order to provide care for elderly parents or even grandchildren are having to give those roles up with the obvious consequences of that being clear to most of us in here. There is no doubt, too, that those pension age changes are having a knock-on effect in the numbers of women over 60 who are now having to claim job seekers allowance or employment support allowance. Surely the Government assessed that before they decided this policy? There are many other consequential effects, too, that the Government has chosen to ignore at best or simply does not care about at worst. Think about the loss of support for families and children that are very much a part of the caring role that retired grandparents can offer. Think about the young people who will not be able to find work or get promotion, because there are fewer opportunities. As a result of older people being forced to stay and work longer, think about the thousands of charities who rely on many older people volunteering who now can't because they are being forced to work much later in life. All of those outcomes have a cost associated, both financial and social, and it must be one of the most deliberately callous policy decisions ever taken by any Government. As Stuart McMillan said earlier, even if it was justifiable—which it is not—it is not good enough to claim, as some have, that the Scottish Government should make this up. We cannot introduce a top-up benefit to mitigate even the worst of the Tory policies, because it would effectively have to be age-related, which we cannot do under section 28 of the 2016 version of the Scotland Act, which makes it clear that we cannot provide assistance by way of pensions to individuals who qualify by reason of age. I once again thank Sandra White for bringing this important matter to the attention of the Parliament this evening. Even taking Brexit into account, this pension's robbery must be one of the most scandalous decisions ever meted out by a Government on its citizens, and it should be sorted. The must-be women have already paid their money in. It is their money, not the Government's, and the UK Government shouldn't steal that away from them now. I call on Shirley-Anne Somerville to close the Government Cabinet Secretary around about seven minutes, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I begin by thanking Sandra White for bringing this important motion to the Parliament today. I also pay tribute to the many waspy women who are here, including those from my constituency in Dunfermint and West Fife, and to the many across the country who have been mentioned by Tavish Scott and others who have campaigned entirely on this for years. The UK Government's mishandling of the issue is a grave injustice, and one that is sadly emblematic of the way that the UK Government has chosen to reduce public expenditure by laying the burden of austerity squarely on the shoulders of women. We pay our national insurance contributions in the expectation that we will receive our state pension at a certain age. As Sandra White and Annabelle Ewing have said, the state pension is not a benefit, it is a social contract with the people. However, for over 2 million women, that is now simply not the case. The UK Government moved the goalpost just as they were nearing retirement age, and then to make matters worse, they did not even have the decency to tell them about it. Those changes have seen retirement plans shattered. There is a deep financial cost, with many struggling to make ends meet while preparing for a longer road to their state pension. Of course, many of those women will now miss out on valuable rears of retirement with their families. They have been badly let down. In principle, the Scottish Government is supportive of an equal state pension for men and women. However, we do not agree with the unfair manner in which the UK Government has implemented that change. When Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, concluded his visit to the UK last year, he said and I quote, "...the impact of the changes to pensionable age is such as to severely penalise those who happen to be on the cusp of retirement and who had well founded expectations of entering the next phase of their lives, rather than being plunged back into a workforce for which many of them were ill-prepared and to which they could not reasonably have been expected to adjust with no notice." The UK Government fundamentally altered the life plans and the life chances of hundreds of thousands of women and then neglected to properly inform them about it. Many of those women have already faced staunch inequality throughout their lives, and, as Sandra White and Alison Johnstone pointed out today, from next month many of those women will be doubly disadvantaged due to the UK Government's new rules around pension credit eligibility. Couples where one person is above state pension age and the other is below it will now have to make a claim for universal credit rather than pension credit. Universal credit is significantly less generous than pension credit and comes with a host of other problems that we simply do not have time to go into today. However, it is yet another example of the waspy women being let down simply to save money. Pauline McNeill and Neil Bibby rightly pointed out that many of the waspy women grew up in a time where having a career and raising a family was even harder than it is now. The burden of domestic labour fell squarely on the women's shoulders. Child care was scarce. Many worked part-time and still do. Of course, as is still the case for some, whether in full or part-time work, the vast majority of those women were not paid equally to their male colleagues. Maureen Watt? Maureen Watt recognised that, at that time, women were given the option of paying the full stamp or the lower stamp and a lot opted for the lower stamp because they were on lower wages. Maureen Watt brings up another very important point about how this was a catalogue of decisions that the women made with the best of knowledge and the best of intentions during their life. That is why the fact that the UK Government needs to fulfil their part of that social contract that I spoke about at the start of my speech. The equalisation of state pension age was supposed to be about equality, but the manner of its implementation has been done in nothing but a way that has compounded the injustice that the women have faced all their lives. I would now like to turn to the misrepresentation from the UK Government over the powers available to the Scottish Parliament through the Scotland Act 2016. The UK Government has, on numerous occasions, suggested that the Scottish Government has the ability to support waspy women by providing the support that the UK Government has taken away. Although that might be a convenient way for them to disengage from the mess that they created, it is simply not the case, Presiding Officer. Constantly repeating that misinformation is a disservice to those who have been affected. I wonder if you agree with me that it is a bit like a judge saying that the Tories are guilty of theft and then say, I now charge the SNP with picking up the tab. Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills That is certainly a fine way of putting it, and I would agree with Gil Paterson with the basis of that intervention absolutely. This is the UK Government's method, it is the UK Government's responsibility to tidy that up, but I will go on to why the Scottish Government cannot intervene on this issue. Section 24 of the Scotland Act 2016 allows the Scottish Government to top up a reserved benefit. However, while some of the women affected may be receiving some form of benefit, depending on their individual circumstances, they will not as a whole be receiving a reserved benefit that could be topped up. Section 26 is limited to providing help for short-term needs, and those needs must require to be met to avoid a risk to a person's wellbeing. That would not only require every person to be assessed individually, but it is also not going to allow assistance for the majority of those in the waspy group. Finally, section 28 gives the Scottish Government the power to create new benefits, but it clearly states that we cannot provide assistance by way of pensions or to persons who qualify by reason of old age, yet the UK Government is suggesting that we can provide mitigation for those specifically because of their age and a lack of state pension. In conclusion, I hope that the UK Government does not continue to try and deflect this issue on to the Scottish Government. It seems to want to ignore it. It seems to want to simply shrug their shoulders, throw up their hands and hope that those women will get tired and the issue will go away. However, it will not go away, and it is not too late for the Government to take responsibility for the heartbreak and the misery that they are causing and to find ways and means to provide transitional protection for those women. In her opening speech, Michelle Ballantyn talked about how much those alternatives may cost. Many members have pointed out quite rightly of the examples of when the UK Government has indeed found money when it was a priority for them to do so. However, the key point is that this is not the UK Government's money, it is the women's money. They have paid for it over decades, and that is why the Scottish Government will continue to fully support the waspy campaign and I congratulate all the members who have supported Sandra White's motion. Thank you very much. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting of Parliament.