Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the petitioners and the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for bringing this debate here today and leading it.

The claim the Government have made is that 90% of affected women knew of the changes to their state pension age. That survey was not representative of the affected cohort: around 200 women born in the 1950s were asked, out of a total sample size of 1,950 people. I ask the Minister, as the WASPI campaigners ask, is it fair to let the DWP mark its own homework? I also ask him to explain why the Government have taken the almost unprecedented step of ignoring the independent findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Several hundred women in my constituency, along with thousands of other women in Scotland, signed the petition to introduce a compensation scheme—almost 160,000 women signed it across these islands. I am sorry if I sound angry on this auspicious day—and I wish everyone here, including you, Sir Edward, as well as people watching at home, a very happy St Patrick’s day—but I am angry, and I reflect the anger of the WASPI women. It is the human aspect of this decision that so sticks in the craw: pensioners seem to be singled out to take the hardest cuts of all. Many WASPI women have written to me talking of losing family and friends who never lived to see them get justice for their loss.

This was a Government elected—many of its Members in Scottish constituencies—on promises of change. Yet all we see is a series of broken promises: national insurance rises, the family farm tax, pensioners in fuel poverty, the Scotch whisky industry, energy prices and the two-child cap. Last July, SNP supporters lent Labour candidates their vote. They believed the promises that were made. “Read my lips,” said Anas Sarwar, “no austerity under Labour.” Yet what we see is attack after attack on the most vulnerable people. Here we have the WASPI women—people who many Labour candidates stood and had their photographs taken with, holding placards promising their support, and this Government have spurned them. Well, hell hath no fury; the WASPI women will not forget that, along with all the other broken promises.

I have heard many Scottish Labour MPs speak today, but when they had the chance to support our motion, only one voted with us. The 2026 Holyrood elections are just around the corner, and although 2029 may seem a long way off, voters—just like the WASPI women—will not forget Labour’s broken promises. I say to the Government: give the WASPI women the justice they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mr Stringer, and I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for leading today’s debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I look forward to hearing her closing remarks.

Questions about when each of us can draw our pension are hugely important and so are related questions about how we spend our latter years, including when we can retire. Therefore, it not surprising that this petition has garnered so many signatures, nor that this debate has brought so many spectators and hon. Members to Westminster Hall today. Of course, none of us needs to come here to have those conversations. We have them every week precisely because they matter so much.

I have declared an interest on this issue before: my aunt in Aberystwyth sees herself as a WASPI woman. Just two weeks ago, I met Georgina Kettleborough at Burlais primary school. She has supported children for over three decades in the canteen and throughout the school and is about to retire at the age of 69. I hope we can all join in congratulating her on that milestone, as we join my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) in congratulating his mother on her birthday.

Georgina’s retirement comes several years after she was entitled to her state pension because working in the school is such a big part of her life. People will not be surprised to know, however, that she would have preferred to receive her pension earlier. Everyone will understand that. Who would not feel that way—especially women from a generation that suffered such significant disadvantage in the labour market and elsewhere, as the hon. Members for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) and for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) spelled out?

However, the ombudsman did not investigate the decision of the Conservative Government to increase the state pension age for women in 1995 or that of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government to accelerate those increases in 2011. I make that point because several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), have referred to the desirability of those original decisions. That is not to downplay the significance of those decisions —far from it. SPA equalisation was a very large and important change, and the acceleration was opposed by my party for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson). But the ombudsman did not investigate the legality or merits of those decisions. Instead—I should note that the WASPI campaign is clear on this point—the sole focus was on how those changes were communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The ombudsman looked at six cases that it said reflected the range of issues and the injustices raised. It concluded that the DWP provided adequate and accurate information on changes to the state pension age between 1995 and 2004. However, it also found that decisions made between 2005 and 2007 led to a 28-month delay in sending out letters to women born in the 1950s. The ombudsman says that those delays were maladministration, as almost every hon. Member who spoke today reiterated.

We respect the work of the ombudsman, its independence and the work it does, a point many hon. Members have raised. In this case, we agree that the letters should have been sent sooner. We have apologised and we will learn the lessons. However, as everyone in this room is well aware, we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or remedy. Many hon. Members have asked whether that invalidates the role of the ombudsman, including my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey). My strong view is that it does not. It is, rightly, rare, but not unprecedented, for a Government to take that view.

Two important considerations when making that decision were that the evidence shows that sending people unsolicited letters can be ineffective, which is why it is part of a wider communication campaign on every issue where it is used today, and that the majority of 1950s-born women were aware of the fact that the state pension age was changing, if not of their specific state pension age. The ombudsman assumed that sending letters earlier would have changed what women knew and how they acted.

[Seamus Logan]

Can the Minister explain his assertion that the majority of women were aware of these changes?

[Torsten Bell]

I will come to exactly that point shortly.

The 2014 research was not properly considered by the ombudsman. The same research is now the subject of live litigation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) noted. In addition, there was considerable awareness that the state pension age was increasing. Research from 2004 used by the ombudsman shows that 73% of people then aged 45 to 54 were aware that the state pension age was going up. Further research from 2006 reinforced that finding and was given to and used by the ombudsman. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) focused on the widely used 43% figure, but that figure refers to all women, including some aged 16 at the time of the survey, not just those who were affected by the state pension age changes.