Torsten Bell

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Dr Murrison. I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing a debate on this important topic. I also thank him, if slightly less enthusiastically, for its timing, which is on my first day in office. That fact also explains the delay in answering the named day question put by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), which he referred to in his contribution to the debate. I am under no illusion that everyone in this Chamber, or almost everyone in this Chamber, will agree with everything that I am about to say. However, all of us who have listened to this debate and to the important points made by right hon. and hon. Members have benefited from it, and we all recognise the context of this debate, which is the squeeze on living standards that has affected women born in the 1950s just as it has the entire country. The issues that we are discussing today are important to many women, including my aunt in west Wales, who was born in 1955 and who pays particularly close attention to these issues. I spoke to her last night as part of my preparation for this debate and she would agree with the points made by the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), that women of her generation have faced many difficulties and particular discrimination. People have spoken powerfully about that. It is therefore right that this debate gives the long-held concerns of those women the consideration they deserve, just as it was right that the Government considered those concerns in making the decision that we are debating today. That is also why my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), was the first Minister in eight years to meet WASPI Ltd, why the Government considered the ombudsman’s investigations and reports in detail, and why we look closely at what Parliament has said on this subject. Although I understand that the outcome was disappointing for many, the decision was based on the evidence. Before I set out how we reached that decision, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) requested, it is worth reiterating the point that several Members have made: the ombudsman’s report was not about the decision in 1995 to increase the state pension age for women, or the decision in 2011 to accelerate that increase. Those decisions were the focus of remarks by many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). They were taken by Parliament, including by many Members who are here today, and they were upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2020.