Rebecca Long Bailey

The hon. Lady has been a fantastic campaigner for her constituents during her time in this House. I say in response that this issue unites the House; we are all angry about the injustice that these women have faced, and we want the Government to take action. Spanning various Governments and various Administrations, these women have had to fight relentlessly just for what they are owed, and that is not acceptable. I have no doubt that there are numerous colleagues at Cabinet level who agree with the women’s cause. They may be struggling to find options and answers, and that is what we are here today to provide. I hope that they are listened to and acted on, because injustice is injustice. If we are saying that victims of one injustice can be compensated by the Government, but that victims of another are not so deserving, we are travelling down a very dangerous path. There are options to cover the cost and ensure that there is no heavy administrative burden, and I will give a few of them. The ombudsman’s guidance on financial remedy sets out its suggestion at level four on the severity of injustice scale, and it estimates that such remedy would involve public spending of between £3.5 billion and £10.5 billion. Campaigners have suggested that an earlier stage—level five—was under consideration, and that would cost between £10 billion and £31 billion. In both cases, as Lord Bryn Davies of Brixton has highlighted, that recommendation and, indeed, any other scheme would not preclude tapering the amount paid, which would bring down costs considerably. WASPI and its sister campaigns suggest a bell curve model. They have highlighted the fact that other large compensation schemes for DWP maladministration have been viable, and proposed that any financial remedy could allocate the most compensation to those who have had the shortest notice of the longest delay to their state pension age—in other words, supporting those most heavily impacted in a bell curve model. They state that redress must be speedy, simple and sensitive, and they want to avoid legal action. They have asked the Government to enter into talks to address this very issue. The WASPI group proposes that this remedy could take the form of a one-off payment that fairly takes that into account, but that level four should not be a ceiling, given that not all circumstances are identical to the six sample claimants. WASPI Scotland has also highlighted how a scheme could be operated relatively easily, using DWP records of dates of birth or national insurance prefixes, on either an opt-in or an opt-out basis. That information is readily available and would not require complex application systems or the processing of such applications.