Women’s State Pension Age: PHSO Report

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that last point. To be absolutely clear, because there has been no response to the report, there is no compensation scheme. Anyone claiming to offer it is scamming and nobody should touch it—please can that message go out loud and clear. I understand my noble friend’s general point, and I know he will understand the position that this Government are in. At the risk of boring myself, never mind the House, all I can do is repeat that the Government are looking very closely at the findings of the ombudsman and will respond as soon as is practicable.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister has outlined that she cannot currently give a date, but is she certain that this group of women is clearly defined in the department? There are representative groups, but when a decision is made, does the DWP know exactly whom they need to communicate with?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, just to be clear, I am not making any assumptions about anything. In a sense, this is about when people were born. For example, we know that around 3.5 million 1950s-born women were impacted by state pension changes, as were a group of men. Most of those people have now reached state pension age, but I think there are 790,000 people born in the 1950s who have not yet reached that age. I am not saying that anything in this area is straightforward—it is not—but I understand the noble Baroness’s warning that any attempt to communicate with groups of people will need to be done carefully and with precision.