Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Debate between Liz Kendall and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report says what many WASPI women across my constituency have been saying for years, which is that between 2005 and 2007 the DWP and the last Labour Government let them down. I am therefore grateful to the Secretary of State for her apology, but that will come as cold comfort to those who are in this situation in the face of no financial compensation. If I am right in what I hear, she says mitigation is too complicated and that it is someone else’s fault. That will be no comfort to those impacted. What conversations does the Secretary of State plan to have with the WASPI women to see what more support can be put in place for those most impacted?

[Liz Kendall]

I met the WASPI campaign in opposition when I was appointed shadow Work and Pensions Minister. The Minister for Pensions was the first of her kind to meet the WASPI campaign for eight years, and she is happy to meet them again. I say to the hon. Lady, who feels very deeply about the issue, that we will learn all the lessons from what went wrong with the delay in sending the letters out, but we do not agree that even if we had done that, they would have made the difference that the ombudsman claims. This is not about the matter being too complicated; we do not believe that, when 90% of women aged 45 to 54 knew the state pension age was increasing, a flat-rate compensation scheme costing up to £10.5 billion would be a fair or proportionate use of taxpayers’ money.

Learning Disabilities Mortality Review

Debate between Liz Kendall and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

My right hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for equality issues in her role as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. I take on board everything that she has said, and I will certainly look more closely at the issue that she has raised.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The true disgrace is that none of this is new and we have been here before. Five years ago the Government set out their promises to tackle this appalling death by indifference, yet we have seen no progress. Can the Minister tell me how many hospitals regularly ask the four questions on treatment of people with learning disabilities set out by Sir Mike Richards, how many clinical commissioning groups check and monitor how many health checks and health plans people have in place, and what Health Education England has done to put the training in place to try to start turning the tide on this appalling situation?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady is right that this issue was identified a few years ago. The report was commissioned in 2015 and has been in the making since then. There was a Care Quality Commission report in 2016 which concluded that bereaved families do not often experience openness and transparency. Everything we have done up until this point—the mortality review, the learning from deaths programme and all the other things we have put in place with regard to the transforming care programme and annual health checks—is geared towards addressing this very issue.