Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of providing compensation for losses women who have already reached their state pension age have incurred through changes to the state pension law made by the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts.

The Government will not be revisiting the State Pension age arrangements for women affected by the Pensions Act 1995 and Pensions Act 2011. These women will receive their State Pension either at the same age as men or earlier as we remove the current inequality. A concession was made prior to the passing of the 2011 Act which reduced the delay that anyone would experience in claiming their State Pension, relative to the previous timetable, to 18 months. This concession benefited almost a quarter of a million women, who would otherwise have experienced delays of up to two years. A similar number of men also benefited from a reduced increase, and the concession was worth £1.1 billion in total.

It is worth noting that the average woman who reached SPa in 2015 gets a higher state pension income over her lifetime than an average woman reaching SPa at any point before. Also, over a lifetime, the average woman who reached State Pension age in 2015 will still receive more than the average man in spite of the rise in women’s state pension age.