Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Debate between Julian Lewis and Peter Aldous

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.