Today, British Conservatives voted to abstain on a report from the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee intended to look at ways to close the gender pension gap, i.e. the difference between the average pre-tax income received as a pension by women and that received by men.
To be clear, we recognise that a gender pension gap exists and supporting measures at EU level to address this problem can be of value. In fact, there are number of sensible suggestions in this report relating to the pooling of best practice and improved data collection to help to identify policy challenges.
However, we chose to abstain because, despite the best efforts of the Rapporteur, wording was adopted that goes beyond the scope of report by casting judgement on different types of social security and pension systems. As clearly stated elsewhere in the report, these areas are the sole responsibility of Member States.
In a similar vein, whilst the Commission has competence in relation to equality, we cannot support calls for the EU to adopt social protection measures. Moreover, well-intentioned references to unisex life tariffs often lead to unintended consequences for industry and, as a result, increased costs for consumers.