§ Miss Holtasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will consider assisting single women with one or more dependent relatives who are compelled by the physical incapacity of such relatives to give up their jobs and spend their whole time looking after such relatives, by making payments to any occupational pension fund in which such women have been contributors until retirement age or their earlier return to work and by taking powers to preserve the pension rights of such women during their enforced absence from work.
§ Sir K. JosephThe making of payments of this kind to an occupational 291W pension fund would not be an appropriate way of helping women who have had to give up their jobs and would in any event be unfair to women similarly placed who had not been contributors to an occupational pension fund. But the Social Security Act 1973 includes provision, due to take effect in April 1975, for pension rights to be preserved where a member of an occupational scheme who has attained the age of 26 leaves after at least five years' pensionable service.