Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mr Stringer, and I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for leading today’s debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I look forward to hearing her closing remarks.
Questions about when each of us can draw our pension are hugely important and so are related questions about how we spend our latter years, including when we can retire. Therefore, it not surprising that this petition has garnered so many signatures, nor that this debate has brought so many spectators and hon. Members to Westminster Hall today. Of course, none of us needs to come here to have those conversations. We have them every week precisely because they matter so much.
I have declared an interest on this issue before: my aunt in Aberystwyth sees herself as a WASPI woman. Just two weeks ago, I met Georgina Kettleborough at Burlais primary school. She has supported children for over three decades in the canteen and throughout the school and is about to retire at the age of 69. I hope we can all join in congratulating her on that milestone, as we join my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) in congratulating his mother on her birthday.
Georgina’s retirement comes several years after she was entitled to her state pension because working in the school is such a big part of her life. People will not be surprised to know, however, that she would have preferred to receive her pension earlier. Everyone will understand that. Who would not feel that way—especially women from a generation that suffered such significant disadvantage in the labour market and elsewhere, as the hon. Members for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) and for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) spelled out?
However, the ombudsman did not investigate the decision of the Conservative Government to increase the state pension age for women in 1995 or that of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government to accelerate those increases in 2011. I make that point because several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), have referred to the desirability of those original decisions. That is not to downplay the significance of those decisions —far from it. SPA equalisation was a very large and important change, and the acceleration was opposed by my party for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson). But the ombudsman did not investigate the legality or merits of those decisions. Instead—I should note that the WASPI campaign is clear on this point—the sole focus was on how those changes were communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The ombudsman looked at six cases that it said reflected the range of issues and the injustices raised. It concluded that the DWP provided adequate and accurate information on changes to the state pension age between 1995 and 2004. However, it also found that decisions made between 2005 and 2007 led to a 28-month delay in sending out letters to women born in the 1950s. The ombudsman says that those delays were maladministration, as almost every hon. Member who spoke today reiterated.
We respect the work of the ombudsman, its independence and the work it does, a point many hon. Members have raised. In this case, we agree that the letters should have been sent sooner. We have apologised and we will learn the lessons. However, as everyone in this room is well aware, we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or remedy. Many hon. Members have asked whether that invalidates the role of the ombudsman, including my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey). My strong view is that it does not. It is, rightly, rare, but not unprecedented, for a Government to take that view.
Two important considerations when making that decision were that the evidence shows that sending people unsolicited letters can be ineffective, which is why it is part of a wider communication campaign on every issue where it is used today, and that the majority of 1950s-born women were aware of the fact that the state pension age was changing, if not of their specific state pension age. The ombudsman assumed that sending letters earlier would have changed what women knew and how they acted.