Helen Whately

I thank the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for advance sight of her statement, and I thank the ombudsman and his team for their work on this important matter. In March this year, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman published its final report into the way that changes to the state pension age were communicated to women born in the 1950s. The report took over five years to produce and reflects the complexity of the issue. It spans a 30-year period across different Governments, dating back to Parliament’s decision in 1995 for the state pension age for men and women to be equalised, in a long-overdue move towards gender equality. As the chief executive of the ombudsman set out, the Department for Work and Pensions fully co-operated with the ombudsman through its investigation and provided thousands of pages of detailed evidence to support it. It is because we took the work of the ombudsman so seriously that it was right for the Government to fully and properly consider the findings, and we were committed to working with Parliament to provide an appropriate and swift response. However, as the House will know, the general election was called less than two months later. Given that it has taken Labour five months since the general election to provide its findings, I am sure the Secretary of State would agree that there was insufficient time to take a considered and fair decision between the publication of the report and the election. I am glad that the Secretary of State has picked this issue up since coming into office and has brought her statement to the House today. I will be considering it in more detail in the days and weeks to come, as well as the basis on which she has reached her conclusion. I am sure that the Government’s statement today will be a huge disappointment to WASPI women, and I recognise the strength of feeling about the issue. As a constituency MP, I have met WASPI women who live in Faversham and Mid Kent and heard their personal stories. No doubt campaigners will note the Government’s apology for the decisions made between 2005 and 2007 that led to a 28-month delay in sending out letters, which the ombudsman identified as “maladministration”. But let us be clear: the decision to provide no compensation is the Government’s decision, and they need to own it. I am not going to let them get away with saying that there is no compensation because of a fictional black hole in the public finances. The country’s financial position now is a result of their political choices. They should not try to dodge responsibility by suggesting to WASPI women that, if times were different, they might have come to a different conclusion. Government compensation should always be based on what is fair and just. That brings me to some questions. Given the announcement that they will not be providing financial compensation, will the Government put forward any other non-financial form of remedy for the women affected? Will the Secretary of State be involving the WASPI campaigners in the action plan she has referred to and what is the timeline for that? The Secretary of State claimed that pensioners are better off under Labour, but let us not forget that it was the Conservatives who introduced and protected the triple lock, which has seen the state pension increase by £3,700 since 2010, and there are now 200,000 fewer pensioners living in absolute poverty. Does the right hon. Lady know how many women affected by her decision are on pension credit? Labour’s own impact assessment shows that its decision to scrap the winter fuel payment will see 5.2 million women lose out. How many of those hit by those cuts to the winter fuel payment are also affected by today’s announcement? Finally, given that the Government have dismissed the recommendations of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, will the Secretary of State set out what implications she sees for the future of the ombudsman?