State Pension Changes: Women

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on his introduction to this important debate. I also declare an interest: my wife is one of the 3.8 million who were affected by the changes to the state pension age—although she can count herself as one of the lucky ones. Unlike hundreds of thousands of other women of her generation, this scandal did not condemn her to destitution in her retirement or undo the long-made plans she had spent her life working towards.

For others, of course, the situation is very different. One of my constituents, whose story has been recorded by the WASPI campaign, described her feelings as

“being robbed of the way of life that I thought I would have”,

after being informed that she would have to wait until the age of 66 to receive the state pension. This constituent, who was also affected by the collapse of Equitable Life, found herself unable to secure employment in a jobs market defined by systematic discrimination against older women, and thus became reliant on her husband’s earnings to survive.

There is a grim irony here. Women born in the 1950s were at the forefront of the fight for equal pay and rights in the workplace. A considerable number would have been the first women in their families to have their own job. For many, that independent income would have given them the opportunity for the first time to leave abusive or exploitative relationships. Yet later in life, many of these women, to whom all of us workers owe so much, have found themselves once again reliant on their spouses just to get by.

We cannot overstate the sense of betrayal felt by those who have been affected: a generation of women who upon leaving school were promised, as I was, that the state would be there to provide a level of safety and security later in life. Instead, they find themselves struggling to survive during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory.

Last year, the WASPI campaign found that 70% of its members had been forced to reduce their weekly spending, with more than half struggling to pay essential bills and one in four struggling to afford food. Women who have worked all their lives have been left impoverished. A covenant has been broken.

That the WASPI women have been subject to grave injustice is beyond question. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report is absolutely clear that there was maladministration in how the DWP communicated information about the state pension age changes and the Department failed to act upon its own research, which showed that women born in the 1950s were not aware of those changes, but more than three years on the DWP has yet to come clean and publicly accept these findings.

In that time, tens of thousands of affected women have lost their lives, with one WASPI woman dying every 13 minutes. The Government’s approach seems to have been to hope that the WASPI women would simply go away—but anyone who has met the WASPI campaigners, as I have during some of their many lobbies of Parliament, will know that that that is not going to happen.

In a few short weeks, the ombudsman is expected to publish the next stage of their report, detailing its findings concerning the impact of maladministration in relation to the WASPI women and its recommendations on compensation. The Minister will no doubt urge patience, but the question that many WASPI women are asking is this: how much longer must they wait to receive some form of financial restitution, and will they even still be here by the time it arrives?