Women’s State Pension Age: Ombudsman Report

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Mr Deputy Speaker:

“I was plunged into huge anger…upset…distress. I felt like I had been scammed. Why hadn’t anyone told me my pension age had changed? Why hadn’t I known about it?”

Those are the words of Hilary, who, like millions of other women born in the 1950s, was hit by the change in the state pension age. Hilary was left tens of thousands of pounds worse off. She had budgeted for her state pension beginning at 60, not six years later. She struggled to make ends meet and started to look for another job, but she asked, “Who’s going to employ a woman in her late 50s?”

Hilary was not alone. Millions of women born in the 1950s were robbed of their pensions. A survey carried out by the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, to whose tireless advocacy I pay tribute today, particularly those WASPI women in Coventry South, found that half the women surveyed struggled to pay essential bills, and one in four struggled to put food on the table. But it was not just the financial hit; it was the worry, stress and the feeling that they had made a mistake, and that it was their fault they did not know that the pension age had changed. The ombudsman’s report puts that to bed once and for all. The fault for not knowing was not with those women; the fault was with the Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. There was maladministration in communicating the changes and an injustice was done. That is what the ombudsman concluded, and it utterly vindicates the WASPI campaign.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and every 13 minutes a WASPI woman passes away and is forever denied justice. Since the beginning of their campaign, 280,000 women affected by the pension change have passed away, never to see this wrong righted. It is utterly scandalous that the Government seem intent on dragging their feet for as long as they can. On 24 March, after the ombudsman’s report was published, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the House that he would respond “without undue delay.”

Almost two months have passed, another 6,000 WASPI women have passed away and still this Government are doing nothing. The Government have still failed to heed the report’s recommendation

“to identify a mechanism for providing appropriate remedy for those who have suffered injustice”,

and that is no surprise.

The report concludes that it strongly doubts that the DWP will provide a remedy to the injustice, so it is up to this place and all our colleagues to rise to this challenge and to right this wrong. We have a recent example of that happening. After the Post Office Horizon scandal was brought to life in a TV drama, the Government responded to the public outcry and introduced legislation to address that injustice. It was the right thing to do, but it should not take Toby Jones and ITV for the Government to do their job. They need to act, and act now.

I will finish with this: the ombudsman’s report is right that an injustice was done. These women lost out. Some were made tens of thousands of pounds worse off by these changes. They were made to feel like they had made a mistake, as if the fault was theirs. The stress and pain has been immense. I will conclude by saying that not only must the Government compensate these women as a matter of urgency, but they must go beyond what has been recommended by the ombudsman, which is not nearly enough to cover the hurt, distress and lost income faced by many of these women. I join the WASPI campaign in calling for fast and fair compensation, giving justice to women who have been denied it for too long already.