Until 2003, married women could pay lower social security contributions and later receive a pension based on their husband’s contributions, and Lee Van Katwyk recently suggested looking again at the changes after saying that dozens of pensioners had approached him with complaints.
Employment & Social Security yesterday defended the changes, claiming they were fair and widely communicated, and ruled out a U-turn.
‘The States introduced these reforms to address inequalities in the previous system and establish the principle that pension entitlement should be based on an individual’s own contribution record,’ said ESS president Tina Bury.
‘While the committee is comfortable with the changes that were made in 2004, it is worth pointing out that reversing this decision would naturally have significant financial implications for the Social Insurance Fund as well as the wider public finances, which would not be an affordable course of action given current spending constraints.’
She said her committee ‘does not intend to revisit’ the changes.
Deputy Van Katwyk has been collecting information from the women affected before deciding how to proceed. Some of them told him they had been left with smaller pensions than they expected. Deputy Bury acknowledged that the women affected had acted ‘in good faith’ and made decisions ‘based on immediate financial circumstances’ at the time but added that her committee needed to keep the island’s pensions system ‘fair, sustainable and affordable for current and future pensioners’.
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