State Pension Changes: Women

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I am delighted to participate in this debate and, like so many other speakers, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing it forward. I also pay tribute to the WASPI women who have campaigned so very hard and with so much dignity and determination, and in particular to the Ayrshire and Cunninghame WASPI campaigners, whose resilience and strength in their quest for justice has been truly inspirational, especially in the face of ongoing extreme provocation through the inaction and intransigence of the UK Government on this important issue of social justice.

The UK Government have a moral duty to deliver the justice that the WASPI women need and deserve, and we need that to happen urgently. There are 10 clear and perfectly reasonable asks from the WASPI campaign to reach a fair conclusion for the women affected, all of which my party and I fully support. I do not have time to list them today, but the asks are clear and reasonable and should not in any way be controversial.

For years, the women impacted have been left not just in limbo, but in financial distress and poverty, navigating what ought to have been their retirement years after a lifetime of work, stripped of their deserved dignity in retirement. It has caused untold emotional distress. For five long years, the WASPI women have waited for the ombudsman’s investigation to end and for its final report and adjudication to be published, during which time an estimated 260,000 women have died while waiting. That is tragic, utterly scandalous and completely indefensible.

As every speaker today has said, the rightful compensation should be delivered promptly; it must be meaningful and reflect the hardship, distress and injustice suffered by the women, and it must take into account the significant sums wrongly withheld from them. There must be no more obfuscation, avoidance or excuses. The UK Government must at long last deliver for the women. There are no more hiding places.

Like everyone in the debate today, I am very angry at hearing over the years about how WASPI women have had their retirement plans upended and about the hardship they have been thrown into. That has been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, with soaring food and energy prices, rising interest rates and higher mortgage payments. Injustices have been worsened by appalling Government incompetence and mismanagement, as well as Government arrogance and a tone-deaf attitude to WASPI campaigners.

I draw the Minister’s attention again to the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), which would require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for a compensation scheme for women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1960 inclusive who have been affected by the increase in the state pension age. Having robbed women of their rightful pension, the Government, as everybody has urged them to do today, should turn their attention to putting that right, because WASPI women feel that they have been robbed. To govern is to choose and good Governments must have justice at their core. The WASPI women, the victims of the Horizon scandal and those impacted by contaminated blood would not agree that this Government have justice at their core—why on earth would they? When Governments make mistakes, as sometimes happens, they need to be big enough and brave and decent enough to put those injustices right.

The Government must at long last urgently recompense the WASPI women, who have been robbed of their rightful retirement after a lifetime of pay discrimination. Then, they must turn their attention to pensioner poverty in general and reform our current pension system, which is not fit for purpose. Any talk of raising the retirement age further must stop because, we know that raising the retirement age has a disproportionate impact on people on lower pay and of lower socioeconomic status. We need an independent savings and pension commission without delay.

The ombudsman has been clear that the women have suffered from maladministration and injustice, so there can be no argument. There is no place left for the UK Government to hide. WASPI women deserve the retirement for which they worked all their lives. Everyone deserves dignity in retirement. That should not be a controversial statement. It is time for delivery because WASPI women will not, cannot, must not and should not go away. The Government must sort this out urgently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gill Furniss]

I believe I have already answered that. I am not here to announce our manifesto. I am here to debate like those who have already and I am here to listen, but I cannot announce our manifesto.

[Patricia Gibson]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she has been very generous. I just want to ask her on a personal level—forget the Labour party, forget the Government, forget all of that—

[Gill Furniss]

Oh yes, that is going to happen.

[Patricia Gibson]

On a personal level, does she think that WASPI women should receive the full compensation they are due?

[Gill Furniss]

As I said, I am not going to announce our manifesto commitment. Like the hon. Lady, I am here to press the Government who are now in power and have the ability to act. [Interruption.] As a WASPI woman, the hon. Lady would probably be able to guess, would she not? That is all I will say on that subject at the moment.

Two thirds of pensioners living in poverty are women. For many of us, a lifetime of inequalities will continue into retirement. The sadness of the situation lies in how many WASPI women have lost their lives during the time the Government have wasted not doing what they should do. Many women left their careers to look after elderly relatives or to cope after years of manual work, safe in the knowledge that they could get by on their savings for a handful of years until they reached their state pension on turning 60, but found to their horror that their state pension had changed, seemingly without warning.

Over the years, I have heard harrowing stories from both constituents and friends who are truly struggling, torn between whether to heat or to eat and unable to cope with the costs of their mortgage or rent. Pensioners are among those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis, and the Government’s failure to get a grip on the situation has led to rampant inflation and food prices spiralling out of control.

Although I support the policy of state pension age equalisation, it is painfully clear that the way in which it was carried out was shambolic at best. Groups such as WASPI were formed not to reverse the policy of state pension age equalisation, but to mitigate its effects. I commend the group for its work in securing an investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and its subsequent legal victories, including securing changes to the report. As we speak, the PHSO is still investigating actively. Although I do not wish to speculate on what their findings might be, it is a fact that they found that the DWP committed maladministration in how it decided to inform 1950s-born women of the changes.

I will always listen to and engage respectfully with campaigners fighting to right historical injustices, from WASPI women to the Allied Steel and Wire workers. Although I have not been in my role long, I have met representatives of the 1950s-born women on multiple occasions, and I had already met them at previous Labour party conferences. I will be honoured to continue going forward with them and keeping that dialogue open over the coming months and beyond.

I know that the Minister, like me, has been in his role for only several months, but I am sure it is apparent to him that the injustice these women have faced is clear. The poverty that many of them continue to face is also clear. These women desperately need a resolution to the maladministration to which they have been subjected. I therefore urge the Minister to act now to put that injustice right as quickly as possible, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with the WASPI women going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

I very much hear what the hon. Lady says. The whole point of the ombudsman’s investigations is to determine the outcome of that process and how justice is to be delivered.

[Patricia Gibson]

As has happened with other judgments in a legal context, will the Minister commit his Government at the very minimum to implementing the judgment of the ombudsman? Or will they try to fight it, obfuscate and kick it into the long grass?

[Paul Maynard]

I am sure the hon. Lady will appreciate the principle that until a final report is published and until we know the contents of that report, I—as a Government Minister with a duty to manage public money properly—cannot make any such commitment as she describes.