Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation
Warinder Juss Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir John Hayes
I have been in this place a long time, as the hon. Lady knows, and she is here having first been endorsed by the electorate, then rejected, then re-endorsed. I have not had that difficulty myself; none the less, she will know that one learns and grows in this place. As I became more familiar with these arguments—I repeat this—I challenged the Conservative Government, my own party, on this issue, on the record, on the Floor of the House. It is not about this Minister; this is about any Minister who fails to recognise this matter.
Sir John Hayes
If I might make a little progress, then I will happily give way.
It is important to set out some of the detail. Some of the worst-affected women received just 18 months’ notice of a six-year increase in their state pension age. Just under 2 million women fall into that category. The WASPI campaigners acknowledge that some were going to retire only a matter of days, or perhaps weeks, later than expected, whereas those who were given very long notice were clearly in a rather different circumstance. The campaigners are not unrealistic about that. Having met them and discussed it, I know that they are very realistic about the difference between those two groups, and they therefore simultaneously recognise that the Government response needs to be tailored, and measured in the way it gauges the responsibility. The breach in trust is common, but the effect of that breach in trust is different in different cases.
I do not advocate a response to this problem in which every single case is dealt with individually, so that there are as many different settlements as individuals. That would be impractical and delayed, and I emphasise delay because one of these women dies every 12 minutes. There will be another WASPI woman lost during the course of my speech. That is the reality. These bald statistics mask lives—lives altered, lives damaged and lives restricted by this matter.
Sir John Hayes
That is what inspires me to speak today and, I am sure, inspires the hon. Gentleman, who is about to intervene to say just how much he supports me.
Warinder Juss
A lot of us have previously publicly supported the WASPI women, including by posting photographs on social media. The Government have acknowledged that there has been maladministration, but to have that acknowledgement without some kind of financial backing, even if minimal, not only undermines the process of the ombudsman, who so many of us rely on, but may undermine public confidence in politicians in general.
Sir John Hayes
The hon. Gentleman is right and he encourages me to turn to the ombudsman’s report, which I have before me. Members will be pleased to note that, although I have inserted many tags into my copy of this report and the previous one, I will not refer to all of them. That would take forever.
Suffice it to say that the ombudsman found
“maladministration in DWP’s communication about the 1995 Pensions Act resulted in complainants losing opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently, and diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control.”
The ombudsman’s remedy is set out at the end of the second report. Ombudsmen recommend recompense on a scale—a series of levels, from 1 to 6. The report is here for everyone who has not studied it in detail to see: the ombudsman recommended a level 4 response. That means
“a significant and/or lasting injustice that has, to some extent, affected someone’s ability to live a relatively normal life.”
It suggests that the recompense might be between £1,000 and £2,950.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Warinder Juss Excerpts(2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Debbie Abrahams
The hon. Member—a fellow member of the Work and Pensions Committee—makes a good point. I am sorry that I was unable to attend that event myself, but I will certainly give that matter some consideration, and I hope that the Government will, too.
More than 16 million people in the UK have a disability—nearly one in four of us—and nearly half of all disabilities are acquired during a person’s lifetime. In recognition of that, in 2009 the UK not only became a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which includes 40 articles ranging from education and work and employment to the right to life, but enshrined disability as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. We should be proud that we as a country have adopted that, but now it is about how we put it into practice, because we have unfortunately gone backwards in many ways.
Despite the important moves that the then Government had undertaken, the austerity brought in by the coalition Government in 2010, and amplified by the Conservative Government in 2015, not only restricted financial and other state support for disabled people—adding further challenges to their lives—but created a culture of fear, particularly for those reliant on social security support who were unable to work. All too often, disabled people were treated as workshy, with the shirker-scrounger narrative perpetuated in policy and practice and, unfortunately, also in our media.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Does she agree that a lot of the disabilities that we need to be aware of are hidden disabilities such as autism, depression and other mental conditions? We do not see those disabilities directly, but we need to be aware of them, and to deal with issues such as unconscious bias that we sometimes come across.
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend makes such an important point—I absolutely agree. I talked about societal barriers and a social model of disability; we need to recognise that disabilities can also be hidden, so I thank my hon. Friend for pointing that out.
The reality is that most people, disabled or not, try to do the right thing, but as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown, if you are a disabled adult or a disabled child, your family is more likely to be living in poverty or destitution. Things became so bad that in 2016, the then Conservative Government were investigated for having breached the UN CRPD. Following an investigation, the UK Government were found guilty in 2017 of systemic violations. As a UN committee spokeswoman declared,
“the committee can confirm that some violations were grave, some others were systematic, and some were both: grave and systematic.”
In particular, the investigating committee found that the rights of disabled people to an adequate standard of living and social protection, to work and employment, and to independent living had been breached.
Oral Answers to Questions
Warinder Juss Excerpts(2 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Stephen Timms
The strategy will be very clear about how we will tackle the scourge of child poverty, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the importance of doing that. Labour voted against the two-child limit, but we will not promise change until we know how we are going to pay for it. That will be addressed in the work of the taskforce, with the results published in the spring.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
No specific assessment has been made of the impact of the household support fund on low-income households in 2025-26, although we hear routinely from local authorities across the country about the impact of the fund in supporting those who are struggling. An evaluation of the fourth iteration of the scheme, running from April 2023 to March 2024, will be published shortly, exploring the benefits of the more than 19 million awards made during this period.
Warinder Juss
I agree that the payment of winter fuel allowance should be means-tested, because many pensioners who receive the winter fuel allowance simply do not need it. However, there are pensioners who are not entitled to pension credit who will struggle to heat their homes. Can the Minister please confirm the extent to which the household support fund will assist those pensioners in my Wolverhampton West constituency?
Andrew Western
The household support fund is intended to support a wide range of households in need, including pensioner households. There has been no ringfencing of funding for specific groups since October 2022, meaning that local authorities have the flexibility to support pensioners who are just above the pension credit threshold. In the 2023-24 financial year, 26% of household support funding went towards meeting energy costs.