Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 1 November 2018 to Question 185131 on Independent Case Examiner, if she will publish that same information for complaints by women on the equalisation of the state pension age.

Individual departments have set up complaints procedures. That approach has not changed under Labour 1997-2010 or successive governments. The DWP has a two tier complaints process which considers formal complaints about our service. Once a complainant has exhausted the DWP complaint process they are signposted to the Independent Case Examiner’s Office if they are dissatisfied with the final response to their complaint.

The Independent Case Examiner is independent, and discusses complaints. The Independent Case Examiner is appointed under contract to adjudicate on escalated complaints about the DWP, and its contracted service providers, in cases where the complainant has exhausted the relevant internal complaints process and remains dissatisfied. If a complainant is dissatisfied with the outcome of an I Independent Case Examiner investigation (or the service provided by the Independent Case Examiner) they can ask their Member of Parliament to escalate their complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

The table below provides details of the number of complaints concerning the equalisation of women’s state pension age, that have been (a) received; (b) accepted for investigation and (c) resolved by the Independent Case Examiner in each month since January 2017 (we have interpreted (c) as a request for the number of concluded complaint examinations).

At the end of October 2018, there were 865 such cases awaiting a decision on whether the complaint could be accepted for investigation, which explains the drop in the number of cases accepted for investigation since April 2018.