Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

My noble friend makes an important point. That is why we are trying to get people, particularly women, to check their state pension age and check exactly what they are going to get. Especially now that the new state pension is different from the old state pension, it is important they all know. I thank my noble friend for her honesty. It makes an important point about the nature of letters. The department did and does write to people sometimes about different things, but people’s recollection of unsolicited letters is not very good. I confessed when we discussed this the last time that when I first went to the department, I said, “I never got a letter about my pension”. And they said, “Well, Minister, we definitely sent them out”. I said, “Well, I didn’t get it”. And then, just over a year ago, I moved house and, when I unpacked a box, what should I find at the top of the box but a letter from the department telling me about the change in my state pension age? At that point, I became much more open to the notion that most people would not have made a different decision had we sent the appropriate letters in that 28-month period—which is not to say that we should not put all the efforts into communicating as well as we possibly can through all the different ways we can to make sure that everybody knows what is happening. There is little more important when you are coming towards retirement age than knowing you will be able to pay the bills and look after yourself, and I hope we will do all we can to support that.