Pensions: Women’s State Pension Age

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I can only repeat what the Pensions Minister, Richard Harrington, said, absolutely and explicitly, that,

“no further moves will be made to assist those women, all of whom will benefit in time from the significant increase in the new state pension”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/16; col. 566.]

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I hear what the Minister says, but the Government must assess the impact of the failure to inform people on their planning for the future. If women did not know, and now face hardship as a result, they should be compensated. Will the Government look to set up a hardship fund?

[Lord Freud]

Let me go through the communications: 14 million personalised pension estimates have been sent out since 2000; 16 million unprompted forecasts were sent out with information on the raising of the pension age; 1 million letters were sent out between 2009 and 2011; 5 million letters were sent out between 2012 and 2013; and, in the 2012 survey it was discovered that only 6% of women retiring within 10 years thought that the pension age was still 60.