Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to follow another expert speech from the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for securing the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) for taking forward his Bill. Both are real WASPI champions, and they make a fierce campaigning duo on the Front Bench.

The state pension is relied upon by more than 12 million of our citizens, and certainty about when they will be able to claim it is pivotal for many more who are planning retirement and making huge decisions based on that date. We now know that when changes to pensions impacting 1950s-born women were being implemented, those changes were not communicated properly. Many received no direct communication at all. Others found out what was to happen too late, having already made major decisions that they would not have made had they known the changes that were ahead. Communicating changes to the state pension must be done well in advance, and using all means possible. That did not happen with the WASPI women. That is the nub of what the ombudsman found, and it is what the Government have to acknowledge.

As the ombudsman said, an apology is due and compensation is owed. Parliament has been asked to take the lead on this, and so the first and most important point that Members have been making unanimously is that the Government must hurry up and deliver. It has already been a long and arduous road to justice for the WASPI women. It has taken far too long, and as has been noted, tragically too many will not get to the end of that road with us. Once again, I pay tribute to my constituent June Miller, a key figure in establishing our Cumbernauld WASPI group. It was an honour to work alongside her and the local team as they were establishing their campaign group, hosting public meetings and running WASPI surgeries. June marched outside Parliament with her WASPI colleagues from across the UK in October 2018. She made the case forcefully, eloquently and patiently—typical of the WASPI campaign.

It is heartbreaking that June is one of more than 280,000 WASPI women to have died during the lifetime of the campaign. That is why the most important message that we are conveying today is that the Government must move swiftly. The Work and Pensions Committee is absolutely right: let us have proposals before the summer, and as has been said a couple of times, those proposals must be amenable to amendment by MPs. It is Parliament specifically that has been tasked with this, not just Government Ministers. As others have said, there is no excuse. The Government should have seen this coming months and years ago.

The big point of contention is clearly the level of compensation. While the ombudsman spoke of level 4 compensation, most of us know that that reflects only the handful of cases that the PHSO looked at, and almost certainly not the range of experiences faced by the WASPI women as a whole. My view is that such a level of compensation feels significantly understated, and is not a fair reflection of the impact that the maladministration had on many of my constituents. I know that lots of hon. Members feel the same way. I therefore join others in commending the work of the all-party parliamentary group, which has argued that fair compensation means level 6 compensation, because of the

“profound, devastating or irreversible impacts”

that the changes had. The point that that went way beyond a financial impact, and caused

“extraordinary emotional, physical and psychological distress”

is consistent with the experience of WASPI women in Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.

I also think that there is considerable merit in a system that allows for higher payments for those who suffered the shortest notice and faced the longest delays until their state pension age. There will be WASPI cases that have not been examined by the ombudsman where compensation for direct financial loss is absolutely appropriate, but again, speed is important. A general payment for lack of notice should not be delayed, but thereafter I do not see why claims for additional awards for direct loss could not also be proceeded with and considered. In that, there would be a parallel with the Windrush scheme, where concerns about the slowness of decision making led to pressure from the Home Affairs Committee for provisional or interim payments to claimants, which thankfully were implemented. It is possible to have speedy payments for all and thereafter to go on and have detailed consideration of individual claimants.

Another, perhaps even more important, lesson from Windrush that I do not think has been mentioned in this debate is that surely it would be wise for the compensation scheme to be run independently of the DWP, and preferably independently of Government altogether. That is surely sensible if people are to have faith in it, particularly when the Department is proving so reluctant even to recognise that it has done anything wrong. The perception of a lack of independence certainly hindered the Windrush compensation scheme and undermined people’s confidence in coming forward to claim from it. We should learn a lesson from that.

Finally, on another day we will need to come back to the question of why it has taken so long to get here. I do not mean any of this as a criticism of the ombudsman or its staff; it is more to do with the resources available to them and the parameters within which they have to work. However, whether with WASPI, Windrush, Horizon, infected blood or any other recent scandal, time and again the mechanisms for putting right injustice and Government maladministration seem to have been slow, and sometimes even more of a hindrance than a help. We need to revisit and overhaul how such failings are examined and remedied. As we have heard, justice delayed is justice denied, and that has certainly been the case for too many WASPI women.

In conclusion, our constituents are not asking for the earth—they never have been. They are quite realistic about what can and cannot be done, and now they have the backing of the ombudsman. The Government need to recognise, to apologise and to compensate, and more than anything they need to do so urgently.