Sir John Hayes

I am grateful to the hon. Lady; I am slightly jealous that I have not managed to attract any kind of applause, but no doubt that will come at the end of my peroration. The hon. Lady is right: that generation of women, born after the war, did not have straightforward lives. That was a difficult time in this country, particularly for women. I talked earlier about their hard work and diligence, and their role as homemakers, mothers and grandmothers. They just deserve better; that is what has driven and inspired me to bring this debate. I will end on this note. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I am mindful of the words of Edmund Burke, who said: “Your representative owes you not only his industry, but his judgement”. In the end, this is a matter of judgment. Do we think the issue matters or do we not? Exercising judgment, I leave him with this further quote, from J.R.R. Tolkien: “False hopes are more dangerous than fears”. We gave these people false hope. I fear that we will not now put this matter right by realising the rightful hope that they had in thinking they were going to retire at a certain time but then ended up doing so at an entirely different time due to a change of Government policy. That was because of nothing they did, nothing they changed, nothing they chose; it was a change in the law. I hope that when the Minister sums up he will recognise the strength of feeling across the House, and across this country: that this injustice must be put right, in the name of democratic legitimacy and the trust that I set out at the beginning of my peroration.