Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What he says is accurate. He quotes from the report; it was in July 2021 that the ombudsman found maladministration. In the report on 21 March, it said that that had led to an injustice. Like my right hon. Friend, I will quote briefly from the ombudsman. It said of the Department for Work and Pensions that

“in 2005 it failed to take adequate account of the need for targeted and individually tailored information. In 2006, DWP proposed writing directly to women individually to let them know their State Pension age had changed, but it then failed to act promptly. We found that if DWP had made a reasonable decision about next steps in 2005, and then acted promptly, it would have begun writing to affected women by December 2006.”

My right hon. Friend and other Members will have seen that in the back of the report, there is a table showing what should have happened when.

I, too, have constituents who wrote to me to say that they were very close to the age of 60 at the time. Some had worked all their working life, since the age of 15 or so. They had made all their plans on the basis that they could get their pension at 60, and they literally found out about the change from colleagues in the workplace, sometimes very shortly before they thought they were due to retire.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Selous]

I will, briefly, but it will probably be the last intervention, as I take heed of what Mr Deputy Speaker said.

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. The point he makes rings true for me. The very first constituent who came to me with a problem when I was elected seven years ago was a WASPI woman. She was less than two years away from retirement when she learned by accident of the change. Seven years on, she is no better off; in a lot of ways, she is much worse off. A lot of those who are not WASPI women now wonder if they know the truth about when they will get their pension. Does he agree that although this issue is fundamentally about the WASPI women, it is about trust, and women having trust in this institution?

[Andrew Selous]

I agree. The issue of trust is really important, one that this House should not take lightly.

In my South West Bedfordshire constituency, it is estimated that there are 6,000 women in this situation. The cost of their compensation, at level 4, as recommended by the ombudsman, would be £6 million at the lower level, and at the upper level £17.7 million. If we extrapolate from that to the UK, I think the sum is £3.9 billion at the lower end and £11.5 billion at the upper end. We must be honest; I believe in honesty in politics. These are large sums—very large, when we add the amount that we will have to pay the postmasters and postmistresses, for whom we are also all campaigning, and the sums for the victims of the infected blood scandal, for whom most of us are also campaigning; and then there are other campaigns, such as the one relating to Equitable Life.