Pensions Bill [HL] — Report — 30 Mar 2011 at 17:08
The majority of Lords voted down Amendment 1 to the 2011 Pensions Bill, moved by Labour Lord McKenzie, that sought to limit changes to be made to women's pensionable age. These changes included increasing the women's pension age to 65 by 2018 in order to arrive at an equal age of 66 for both men and women in 2020. The Amendment text read:
Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out "December 1953"" and insert "April 1955""
Lord McKenzie argued that the existing 1995 Act's timetable would be unfair given women's later inclusion in pensions, their statistical tendency to retire earlier than men and by highlighting the positive impact the Amendment could also have on men. Lord Freud, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions, countered by highlighting the £10 billion cost of removing faster equalisation of women's pensions age and the egalitarian nature of the proposal.
The result of the vote on making Amendment 1 to the 2011 Pensions Bill:
Contents (for) 214; Not-Contents (against) 226. Amendment 1 disagreed.
- Consult DirectGov's explication of the changes proposed
Party Summary
Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.
What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.
What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.| Party | Majority (Not-Content) | Minority (Content) | Turnout |
| Bishop | 0 | 1 | 4.0% |
| Con | 142 (+1 tell) | 0 | 63.8% |
| Crossbench | 15 | 41 | 29.5% |
| DUP | 0 | 1 | 25.0% |
| Independent Labour | 0 | 1 | 100.0% |
| Lab | 1 | 156 (+2 tell) | 63.9% |
| LDem | 63 (+1 tell) | 0 | 66.0% |
| PC | 0 | 1 | 100.0% |
| UUP | 1 | 1 | 50.0% |
| Total: | 222 | 202 | 53.8% |
All lords Eligible to Vote - sorted by party
Includes lords who were absent (or abstained) from this vote.