Women’s State Pension Age

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The important point is that we must carefully consider the report in its entirety—not just one aspect of it, but all aspects. I have undertaken to the House to do that without undue delay.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The ombudsperson was established to decide when things were not necessarily illegal, but had been done in a way that involved malpractice and was wrong, and to decide when a person in the middle needed to come forward and say, “You need to sort this out.” That is exactly what the ombudsperson has now said: their judgment is clear that maladministration happened. There was a question as to whether what was done was illegal or not; in the event, it was not. Rather than hiding behind court judgments, will the Minister apologise on behalf of the Department for the maladministration? Also, will he at least commit to a remedy? I am not saying what that remedy has to be, but will he give reassurance that a remedy will be found? Those are two easy things that he should be able to do now.

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman suggests that we are hiding behind the court cases. I have explained the relevance of those cases and the conclusions to which both the High Court and the Court of Appeal came in 2019 and 2020. We are not hiding behind anything; in fact, as the hon. Gentleman knows, because I read out the quote earlier, on Thursday 21 March—last Thursday—the chief executive of the ombudsman said on Sky News:

“The Government, the DWP, completely co-operated with our report, with our investigation, and over the period of time we have been working they have provided us with the evidence that we asked for.”