Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Lord Doyle Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Doyle (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the person who has studied this the most, namely the ombudsman, said that there was not any direct financial loss from the delay in writing out to people, would my noble friend the Minister agree with me that, given the complexities that she has described of designing a fair scheme, the best use of what are at the end of the day very tight government resources would be to support those pensioners who we know are in financial difficulty through policies such as the pension credit and the triple lock, so we can be confident that we are giving the maximum support to those who really need it?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question, particularly for the recognition that this sounds simple and in fact is very complex. One of the things that has made it so difficult is that it sounds so simple, but the Government had a very specific job to do, which was to respond to a particular report from the ombudsman which had particular findings, and that is what my honourable friend the Secretary of State did. He reviewed what the ombudsman said, looked at the evidence presented to him and made a decision. But my noble friend is right; the Government want to make sure that we support pensioners. For example, a commitment to the triple lock will mean that pensioners could see their incomes rise by up to £2,100 a year by the end of the Parliament. Through our investment in encouraging people to claim pension credit and in extra help for people for heating their homes, there is lots that we are doing to support pensioners, and that is the place to put scarce resources.