Examination of witnesses (Questions 490
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 1998
MRS
SALLIE
QUIN
and MRS
MARY
SINFIELD
Chairman
490. May I convene the meeting of the Social
Security Select Committee. We are in the process of our inquiry
into the draft Pension Sharing Bill and I am delighted to welcome
this morning Sallie Quin and Mary Sinfield from Fairshares. We
are delighted, Sallie and Mary, that you can join us. We are at
a pretty crucial stage in the report. We will need, if we are
going to have any influence in the process, to start thinking
about drafting a report in the very near future, so our work is
at a fairly advanced stage. We are particularly pleased to receive
your written evidence because it does introduce an important aspect
of the work we are seeking to do to improve things for families
on the ground, for real people in a real context. You have a particularly
important contribution to make in that area. I wonder if you could
start—maybe Sallie would be best qualified—to give
a word about your own organisation: the history and the development
of how you have come into being, who you are, what you are, how
many members you are, what kind of funding you have. This is just
to set the scene for the Committee, if you would, Sallie, please.
(Mrs Quin) Fairshares was founded by Dawn Barnett in
1993 when she found herself in her mid 50s with a very depleted
teacher's pension, having taken career breaks to raise three children.
Her husband was divorcing her with a very solid pension—he
was also in education—because he had had no breaks at all.
Since that time we have had about 15,000 enquiries, mostly from
women although not exclusively so. A lot of people are anxious
fathers, who are watching their daughters face a divorce situation
and are trying to help them. A lot have been from husbands who
actually wanted their wives to have a share of their pensions
but were unable to do anything about it, given the law as it was.
We have had some straightforward house husbands who had taken
on the caring role in the marriage. Fairshares developed mostly
through the Rugby paper, that is how it started, and then the
Observer picked it up. Since then people have been joining. It
is a transient organisation because as people come in, if they
reach a settlement some of them still pay their subs and keep
us going, make donations, but a lot of them move on and want to
put it all behind them. So at any one moment our membership is
somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500, I would think.
491. You do have members as such? Do people
pay out a subscription?
(Mrs Quin) We ask for £12 a year and that is what
we try to survive on. We receive donations as well. We are very
fortunate in that respect. However, by virtue of the fact that
these are wives going through divorce, they do not have any money
so we have had to keep it really low.
492. Do you have a regular contact with
your membership in terms of developing policy or making submissions?
The excellent paper you submitted to us, was that done by your
officers or was there a consultation process with your members?
(Mrs Quin) It was thoughts that were kicked around—I
think that is the easiest way to say it. Also, a lot of that was
input that we have received over a period of time. We have just
put it all together.
(Mrs Sinfield) Informative news letters go out to all
our members, and we have a big AGM once a year at which we have
prominent speakers from the pensions or family law associations.
Obviously we are on the telephone to one another all the time.
We do not have much of a hierarchy at all.
493. Do you have any professional officers
serving the group or is it all voluntary?
(Mrs Quin) It is all voluntary.
494. Very good. No doubt it is none the
worse for that. Now, this may sound like a pejorative question
but it certainly is not meant to be. However, if I said to you
that we are interested in trying to make sure that we get a feedback
from all structures and strata of society, the middle classes
are perhaps in the best position to represent and defend their
own interests. Would it be fair to say that you have a membership
structure that straddles most income groups?
(Mrs Quin) Definitely.
495. So you are pretty confident that some
of the voices you are reflecting will come from some of the lower
income households?
(Mrs Quin) Very definitely, yes.
(Mrs Sinfield) In the evidence to date there has been
a lot of comment that from the marriage that there is the house
and the pension. In some cases there is only the pension.
496. Indeed.
(Mrs Quin) Armed forces wives, clergy wives. Very often
there is not a property.
497. Of course. Do you get approaches by
commercial companies who have interests in selling suitable products
to divorced wives? That is not part of your work as you see it?
(Mrs Quin) No. We try to keep ourselves completely removed
from it.
498. Have you been able been since 1993,
(or whenever the organisation started), to make a sensible and
constructive input, as you have seen it, in earlier pieces of
legislation that affect your interests, like the Pensions Act
1995 or the Family Law Act 1996? Did you feel that you were properly
consulted and had a voice in the gestation process which led to
those pieces of statutory law?
(Mrs Quin) Very definitely, yes. We were involved in
both those pieces of legislation.
499. Have you, to date, been involved other
than in the work that you have done with the Committee, and thinking
about the Pension Sharing Draft Bill?
(Mrs Quin) I have been to the meetings of the consultation
panel of the DSS.
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