Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

John Milne Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Last November, as a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I asked the Secretary of State when we could expect to see a decision on compensation for WASPI women. She replied:

“There is lots of information to go through. We need to get it right but I want this resolved as soon as possible.”

I asked about a timescale and she said:

“If I gave you a date then I would have sorted it, and it needs to be sorted, but I will do it as soon as humanly possible.”

No one would have suspected that “sorting” the issue meant an outright refusal. So where did this shock handbrake turn of a decision come from? I suspect it has more to do with the Treasury than with any objective measure of fairness.

In justifying her decision, the Secretary of State made repeated reference to one particular statistic: the DWP survey from 2006 found that 90% of women understood that the pension age was rising. She repeated the 90% figure like a mantra in her presentation to the House and the media, but the survey was based on a tiny sample of perhaps 170 women who could not possibly be taken as fair representation of the entire female population.

Furthermore, the survey was contradicted by multiple other studies conducted both before and after. Research from the following year found that half of women whose pension age had in fact risen to between 60 and 65 still thought it stood at 60. On what grounds did the Secretary of State put so much faith in the 90% figure, rather than the 50%? None that I can see, except that it was cherry-picked to support the conclusion that she always wanted to reach in the first place. What is more, it is clear that the DWP itself attached far greater weight to a later survey. An internal memo from April 2007 described the research findings as “depressing reading”. It continued:

“we still have 50% ‘ignorance levels’ with three years to go. [The Ombudsman’s] first question will be what are you proposing to do about it?”

That turns out to have been a really prescient question.

To further justify their decision, the Government have argued that earlier warning letters would not have worked anyway, but writing letters is exactly how much of the Government communicate to this day. It is sheer nonsense to argue that the standard method of communication across all Departments would have been useless in this one circumstance of WASPI women.

I accept that there are financial pressures on the Government. They could have said: “We accept the ombudsman’s findings, but we are not currently able to respond,” or “not able to meet the full levels suggested.” What is not reasonable is to undermine the ombudsman, which is a highly unusual and constitutionally worrying move, and to pick through the evidence to support the conclusion that they always wanted to find in the first place. Fundamentally, it was neither safe nor reasonable for the Secretary of State to rely so completely on the 90% figure, to the deliberate exclusion of multiple other statistics, which showed a much lower level of awareness. In my constituency, 5,000 women have been affected by this decision; many more of course have been affected nationwide. I call on the Government to respect the vital constitutional role of the ombudsman and think again.