Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress

Debate between Torsten Bell and John Hayes

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know, without having met her, that his mum will not be disappointed in him. Obviously, the point he makes is absolutely right; it is the point that I was just making. I think we are all aware of the experiences that this generation of women have had to face, not just in the labour market but much more broadly. He makes a powerful case, as always.

Now, there is broad political consensus that it is right to equalise the state pension age for men and women, but the acceleration of the state pension age increases by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition was more politically controversial. I was not going to mention it, but I will gently remind Liberal Democrat Members who have spoken today—the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) and for Lewes (James MacCleary) used particularly strong language on this point—that it was the choice made by their party. Not to mention that acceleration at all—[Interruption.] If Members are going to use strong language about difficult choices, then they need to reflect on the choices that led to that point. My party opposed those choices at the time.

However, neither the acceleration nor the longer planned increases to the SPA legislated for since 1995 were matters the ombudsman investigated. This matters, given that it is the desirability of the original policy decisions made by previous Governments that is most frequently referred to by campaigners and by hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) today, who focus on the increases to the state pension age. In contrast, the ombudsman’s focus was on how those changes were communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions, as the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire very clearly pointed out.

As all hon. Members know, we carefully considered the ombudsman’s findings. We always will, given its important role, which was set out by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) today and in several debates that I have taken part in with him in recent months.

[Sir John Hayes]

The Minister is right to say that no party—indeed, no previous Government—can be excused in this respect, because this matter covers the time in office of several Governments. The difference is that members of his party, in opposition, said,

“This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign”,

and that Labour “will compensate” the WASPI women, as it is “their money”. That was said by the current Work and Pensions Secretary and the current Deputy Prime Minister.

[Torsten Bell]

The right hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House for much longer than me, so he knows how this works. Parties set out their manifestos, and I am sure that if he looks at the Labour party’s 2024 manifesto, he will find there different words from the ones he has just shared with the House.

The Government agree that letters should have been sent sooner. We have apologised, and we will learn the lessons from that. However, as hon. Members and campaigners on this issue are well aware, we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or to remedy—and neither, reading carefully between the lines of the speech from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), do the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman spoke very eloquently, as always.

Let us look at what the ombudsman said when it made its decision to lay the report before Parliament. It was not looking ahead to what a future Government might do; it knew that the then Conservative Government would have come to a similar conclusion. Hon. Members should remember that the long debate over those years between the Government and the ombudsman was held in private, so the ombudsman was aware of the approach of the Government, to whom it was talking in a way that those of us outside Government at the time could not have known.

The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) asked about the decision not to accept an ombudsman’s findings. They are right to say that it is unusual, but it is definitely not unprecedented. I should spell out that the Government have accepted other ombudsman findings since, so it is not right to say that this is some kind of fundamental break in the approach by Government.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Debate between Torsten Bell and John Hayes

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Dr Murrison.

I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing a debate on this important topic. I also thank him, if slightly less enthusiastically, for its timing, which is on my first day in office. That fact also explains the delay in answering the named day question put by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), which he referred to in his contribution to the debate.

I am under no illusion that everyone in this Chamber, or almost everyone in this Chamber, will agree with everything that I am about to say. However, all of us who have listened to this debate and to the important points made by right hon. and hon. Members have benefited from it, and we all recognise the context of this debate, which is the squeeze on living standards that has affected women born in the 1950s just as it has the entire country.

The issues that we are discussing today are important to many women, including my aunt in west Wales, who was born in 1955 and who pays particularly close attention to these issues. I spoke to her last night as part of my preparation for this debate and she would agree with the points made by the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), that women of her generation have faced many difficulties and particular discrimination. People have spoken powerfully about that.

It is therefore right that this debate gives the long-held concerns of those women the consideration they deserve, just as it was right that the Government considered those concerns in making the decision that we are debating today. That is also why my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), was the first Minister in eight years to meet WASPI Ltd, why the Government considered the ombudsman’s investigations and reports in detail, and why we look closely at what Parliament has said on this subject. Although I understand that the outcome was disappointing for many, the decision was based on the evidence.

Before I set out how we reached that decision, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) requested, it is worth reiterating the point that several Members have made: the ombudsman’s report was not about the decision in 1995 to increase the state pension age for women, or the decision in 2011 to accelerate that increase. Those decisions were the focus of remarks by many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). They were taken by Parliament, including by many Members who are here today, and they were upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2020.

[Sir John Hayes]

I welcome the Minister to his place; I appreciate that this debate is his first outing and his comments about the timing are well made. However, the WASPI campaigners have never made that case; they have never said that they were against the equalisation. What they said, and rightly so, is that they were not properly informed and that is precisely what the then ombudsman confirmed in his report. Will the Minister just answer this simple question? The ombudsman said that he felt it was unlikely the DWP would respond to his report—it was sad that he should have to say that. The ombudsman proposed—unusually, in his words—that the matter be laid before Parliament. Will the Minister use his endeavours to ensure Parliament gets to vote on the ombudsman’s recommendations?

[Torsten Bell]

We have already had a long statement in the main Chamber. The point of debates like this one today is to make sure that the Government are held accountable for their decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

If my hon. Friend will allow me to make some progress, I will come to exactly that point shortly.

There was considerable awareness that the state pension age was increasing. I think everyone agrees on that even if they do not agree about the research itself. The research used by the ombudsman, from 2004, shows that 73% of people then aged 45 to 54 were aware that the state pension age was going up. Further research shows that, by 2006—when the ombudsman finds that the direct mailing should have begun—90% of women aged 45 to 54 were aware that the state pension age was increasing. We therefore cannot accept that, in the vast majority of cases—and I appreciate it is in the vast majority of cases—sending letters earlier would have affected whether women knew their state pension age was rising or increased their opportunities to make an informed decision. It would not be reasonable—

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. To be clear about this: there are two issues at stake here—how many women knew, and how communications would have affected that. The fact of the matter is that the ombudsman’s report—I have it in my hand—says

“Research reported in 2004 showed that only 43% of all women affected by the 1995 Pensions Act knew their State Pension age was 65, or between 60 and 65.”

That is a clear majority of women who did not know. Therefore the only debate is whether communicating with them would have been effective. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) said, if it would not have been effective, what is the point in Government communicating at all?

[Torsten Bell]

I was not going to go into this detail, but the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is inviting me to return to some of my past lives with the details of surveys. The 43% figure that he is referring to refers to all women. What the ombudsman did not do is look at the same survey and look at the women who were affected by this change, who were obviously slightly later in life and much more likely to know about their state pension age. That is where the higher figures I am quoting come from. It is from the same survey as used by the ombudsman, but it is focused on the women who are actually affected by the change.