Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

I thank the noble Baroness for her questions. I fully understand that the fact that the Government had to take the decision twice will have caused uncertainty, but the decision had to be taken again because of a piece of evidence that emerged during the legal challenge. Therefore, the Government faced a choice: should they just ignore that fact and carry on regardless, or should they withdraw the decision, review all of the relevant evidence, including that piece, and make a decision? The Secretary of State took the right decision: to withdraw the decision, look at the information presented to him and the relevant evidence, including that piece, and reach a view. On the position of individuals, the evidence across the piece suggested that a clear majority of 1950s-born women knew that the state pension age was changing and therefore had the opportunity to find out more. But the noble Baroness raises a really important point: a lot has happened since then, so we have a campaign going on to encourage people to check their state pension age. It is very easy to do this now. You can do it online, which most people can, or you can find non-digital ways. I do it myself every now and again. It tells you when you are going to retire and how much state pension you will get. Also, bringing forward the dashboard for those who have private pensions will enable them to find out, if they have pots stashed in different places, what they have in them. And there is other support coming through in the Pension Schemes Bill, again to make sure that people get the kind of help they need. We are making sure that in future people will get clear and appropriate amounts of notice and we will do all that we can to communicate with them in a range of ways, so that the message gets across.