Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate. When my constituents who have made a complaint come to see me, we quite often get to a stage at which I recommend the ombudsman to them. I regularly say to them, “Have faith: ombudsmen quite often find in favour of the complainant.” Ombudsmen are there for a purpose. We cannot merely support the institution of the ombudsman when it makes a convenient finding for the Government of the day. We have to accept its decisions if we are to have an ombudsman. We all know that trust in politics, politicians and MPs is at something of a low point at the moment, no matter what party we are in. I think that is very unfair, because most people in this House, of all parties, are decent people doing their best for their constituents and working very hard, so that reduction in trust really worries me. The response of the Government and Parliament to the ombudsman’s report is really important, because it touches on the issue of trust in our institutions, which have been through a very difficult time.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument. For the benefit of the record, I draw his attention and that of the House to paragraph 459 of the report, which states:

“For most sample complainants we consider the primary injustice is that they were denied opportunities to make informed decisions about some things, and to do some things differently, because of maladministration in DWP’s communication about State Pension age. That is a material injustice.”

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Aldous]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is a side point to the main point, but nevertheless the PHSO has pinpointed that issue. These are debates for another day. I suspect the right hon. Member for East Ham and his Committee need to look at these issues in more detail, but the PHSO has shone a spotlight on a wider problem.

The aims of the APPG that I co-chair with the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles are threefold: first, to represent those women who have been treated unjustly by the short-notice changes to the state pension age, 280,000 of whom have died, according to WASPI, since the start of the campaign; secondly, to develop and promote policy solutions to support 1950s-born women and their families who do not have access to their pension and are facing mental and physical health consequences; and thirdly, to feed the views and experiences of 1950s-born women into future policy decisions relating to state pensions and welfare.

Over the years, the APPG has had regular evidence-gathering sessions with various representative groups, and we have considered policies and initiatives to best help and assist them. In January 2022, the APPG made its own submission to the PHSO about the level of compensation that should be provided. I give special thanks to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish for the work that he and his office did putting that together. Based on the evidence presented to us from across the UK, we reached what, for us, was the logical conclusion that level 6 of the PHSO’s compensation scale should apply. Subsequently, we refined that recommendation by proposing that compensation should be provided in a bell curve, with those who received least notice of the longest postponement receiving the most compensation, and those who received longer notice of shorter increase receiving lesser sums.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

May I take the opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for his key role in the APPG? I put on the record the dignified and well-informed views of local WASPI co-ordinators in my part of the world, Shelagh Simmons and Sal Robinson. We heard an intervention suggesting each case should be judged on its individual circumstances. I can see the merit in that, but it would have a devastating effect on the speed with which we would come to conclusions. What balance does my hon. Friend think should be struck on those two factors?

[Peter Aldous]

My sense is that there is a need to strike a balance, as the PHSO says. A way forward is beginning to emerge from the work of the APPG and the Select Committee, and I will elaborate on that.

Since the PHSO published its report on 21 March, the APPG has sought to play its role, as part of Parliament, in finding a fair and just mechanism, as quickly as possible, as the PHSO asked Parliament to do. The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and we have subsequently met the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is now back in his place. I thank him for the hearing he gave us.

Last Tuesday, the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I appeared before the Work and Pensions Committee —likewise, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham and his colleagues for the fair and full reception they provided. We are holding our own evidence sessions with the various representative groups; the first three sessions took place on Monday and there are more to follow. This is a complicated matter. While the APPG is yet to reach a settled and final recommendation about the form a compensation mechanism should take, it is fair to say that ideas are fast evolving and are pointing in a direction.