Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Liz Jarvis Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on an issue that is incredibly important to thousands of women and their families in my constituency. I pay tribute to the WASPI campaigners who are in the Public Gallery, and all my constituents who have campaigned tirelessly on the issue.

This debate is about justice, fairness and doing what is right. Liberal Democrats have said all along that we support fair and fast compensation for all the women who were unfairly impacted by the changes to the state pension age. They include my constituent Mary; instead of retiring and receiving a pension in 2016 when she reached 60, as she had been expecting to do all her working life, she found herself having to live on virtually nothing for six years. Ill health following breast cancer, combined with the side effects of chemotherapy, left her too tired to do very much at all.

Then there is Karin. Karin’s life was upended when she took voluntary redundancy in 2016, believing she had three years until her state pension, only to discover that she had six years to wait. The unexpected delay left her struggling financially while caring for an elderly mother, a severely disabled sister and young grandchildren. Karin is deeply disillusioned with the Government’s decision to ignore the ombudsman’s finding, and frankly, who can blame her? She feels that lifelong injustices faced by women of her generation—from being denied equal workplace rights after having children, to the state pension age changes—have been systematically ignored.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the hon. Member agree that the WASPI women are right to use the word “gaslighting” to describe the Government’s suggestion that there is no problem here and that everybody knew? They are not standing by the pledge they made in opposition; it is as if that pledge was never made. That strikes harshly at women who have spent their whole lives facing other aspects of sexism, as she describes.

[Liz Jarvis]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point, and I will come on to that later. Mary and Karin, like so many of my constituents who were impacted by the changes to the state pension age, feel incredibly let down by the Government. After being ignored for so long by the previous Conservative Government, they really believed the MPs who told them that they supported their claim for fair and fast compensation.

The Government should be compensating these women because it is the right thing to do. Many of the women in my constituency who were impacted found themselves in dire circumstances with little to live on. They were forced to take low-paid jobs to make ends meet, and in some cases they turned to food banks. These are not wealthy women, and the unexpected loss of income and the fact that they had to work much longer than they were expecting has had a huge impact on their lives and those of their families. That is in addition to having to cope with the loss of the winter fuel allowance, which is particularly challenging when it has been so bitterly cold. Many of the women are also unpaid carers.

There is also the wider issue that these women feel that they do not matter to this Government—that because they are women of a certain age, they are somehow invisible. These women were born in the 1950s. They spent years working and raising families, and many of them will now have caring responsibilities. Frankly, the way that they have been treated by successive Governments is appalling. They deserve respect and to be treated with dignity.

This issue has been incredibly badly handled by the Government. We all recognise that the previous Conservative Government left the country in an absolute mess and that there are many issues that need fixing—including, most urgently, the NHS and social care—but that does not make this head-in-the-sand approach right. The parliamentary ombudsman said very clearly that there had been maladministration, and the Secretary of State and the Government accepted that. To then turn around and say, “We are sorry about what happened, but we just don’t have the money to compensate you,” is simply not good enough. These women feel betrayed. Telling them that 90% of them knew about the changes, when the ombudsman found that that was not the case, is gaslighting. Indeed, the ombudsman stated that 43% of the women knew; that is quite a difference.

If the Government continue to ignore the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s recommendation for compensation, it raises the question: what is the point of the ombudsman? Where else can people turn if they are victims of maladministration or wrongdoing and feel that no one is listening to them? Many women maintain that they did not receive letters at all, and the Department for Work and Pensions does not have a record of who it wrote to. I can believe that; if any Member has had dealings with the DWP, either as a private citizen or on behalf of constituents, they will know what a nightmare it can be. I suspect that if we asked many people, even now, they probably would not know the exact date when they could retire and receive the state pension.

I urge the Government to reconsider their response, and to look at providing a scheme of compensation starting with those on pension credit. We know that the Government are facing incredibly difficult challenges, but ignoring the voices of thousands of women is a huge mistake. This issue is not going to go away.