Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2024
I recognise the debate’s significance for the WASPI women and their on-going work in the pursuit of justice. They have been tenacious in fighting for their cause.
It is important that the UK Government makes no further delay in responding to the findings of the ombudsman’s report. The current Government must respond, and it cannot leave it to the next Government to clear up the mess. The chancellor’s comment that there is
“no secret vault of money”
is a far from helpful response. We are well aware of the sorry state of the UK Government’s finances, as a result of mismanagement and unfunded spending commitments at the hands of the Conservatives.
Regrettably, there are other examples of the UK Government trying to delay resolution when it comes to having been at fault. The Post Office Horizon cases, the contaminated blood scandal and the Windrush compensation scheme all have parallels. Although the UK Government argues that the information on the changes was provided through some routes, the ombudsman’s report is clear in its conclusions that it failed in communication and that that was maladministration. Decision making by the DWP did not give proper weight to targeted information, and research on the need to appropriately target information was ignored and, as a result, the public were not provided with the fullest information possible.
The DWP also failed to promptly write to affected women. It took years longer than it should have, which further restricted many women’s ability to adjust their retirement plans. The WASPI campaign argues that many affected women did not find out about the change until as late as 2012. Some had only one year’s notice of a six-year delay to their retirement, and many had already left work.
Across the chamber, it is true that some of us are closer to retirement than others, but most of us will have thought about our retirement or are actively planning for it. For many people who are approaching the end of their working life, finding out that, rather than being able to retire in a year’s time, they have another six years before that can happen would have a huge impact not only financially but mentally.
Women who had planned for retirement at 60 may have been expected to take on caregiver roles, which they were then not able to do if they had to continue working. Those who were unable to stay in employment had to rely on savings to get by. There was no secret vault of money for them either, but they had to somehow make it work.
Today, if someone wants to check when they will reach state pension age, they can do it almost immediately on the Government’s website. That comes with the caveat that the age may increase by up to a year for those who were born between April 1970 and 1978, as well as a general note on the potential for change. However, we know that misleading information on the pension age for women was still on the Government’s website until as late as 2016.
Labour has called for an improved notification system that will ensure that future generations are able to properly plan for retirement with timely and targeted information. We must take lessons from this process. It has highlighted the importance of properly considering correspondence and complaints, and particularly of looking at patterns and potential consequences. There are similarities with the Horizon scandal.
We also need to be aware that, as the DWP’s research showed, making policy announcements is not enough. As members of Parliament or Government, we need to be realistic and recognise that, at times, we operate in a bubble, and that most people do not keep on top of policy announcements. The personalisation of news consumption, the fog of disinterest, the sheer breadth of information that is available and the burying of bad news can all add up to a lack of awareness that we need to work to address.
We need to ask ourselves whether the duty of Government to communicate is always sufficient or whether more needs to be done to engage. On the issue of WASPI women, we need to see an immediate response from the UK Government and a resolution to the situation.
16:38