Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the House. The Government say the WASPI women should have known about the changes. I am reminded of a quote from the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“But the plans were on display … you found the notice, didn’t you? … It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’”.


Another relevant quote from the same book said:

“All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 … years”.


The issue here is whether these women were communicated with adequately. Some 3.6 million WASPI women have been badly treated. They were given some hope; we have an ombudsman who made a recommendation to provide some justice and pay some compensation. Can the Minister say why this recommendation has been ignored? We have heard apologies but no compensation.

If you were a woman who knew that, at a certain age, you would receive a pension you probably did not give it another thought that the rules had changed. Of course, lots of announcements were made, and lots of letters were sent—sometimes belatedly, as the ombudsman said—but the truth is that the messages were not received or understood. The ombudsman has recommended compensation of £1,000 to £2,950 per person. I ask the Minister, very bluntly, why this recommendation has not been implemented. It is not a question of justice, but a reluctance to spend money on a group of people who cannot fight back.

Can the Minister take back to her colleagues in the department that there is a feeling—I hope—across this House that the WASPI have been maltreated and that the least they should expect is for the recommendation of the independent ombudsman to be put into effect? It is not enough, in my view, but it has come from the ombudsman, and I would like to hear what reasoning the Minister can give for ignoring this. I hope that she will take back to her colleagues in the other House and in the department the feelings of this House that the ombudsman’s decision should be honoured.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their questions. Last November, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told Parliament that the Government would make a new decision in response to the ombudsman’s findings on state pension-age communications. That followed relevant evidence coming to light as part of legal proceedings challenging the original decision announced in December 2024. The Secretary of State has now concluded the process to make a new decision, and there is a copy of the Government’s full response in the Library.

We need to be clear as to exactly what the ombudsman did and did not investigate. The ombudsman did not investigate the decision, first taken in 1995, to equalise the state pension age nor to accelerate the increases. There are different views about the raising of the state pension age and about the decision of the coalition Government in 2011 to accelerate equalisation and the rise to the age of 66. However, that is not the subject of the ombudsman’s decision. What the ombudsman investigated is how the change in state pension age was communicated to the women affected and whether, within a specific and narrow time period, there was maladministration and injustice, and if so, whether it warrants compensation. The ombudsman concluded that the department’s communications met expected standards between 1995 and 2004. However, it found that between 2005 and 2007 there was a 28-month delay in the DWP sending personalised letters to the women affected. The ombudsman found that this was maladministration. We accept that those individual letters could have been sent earlier and the Secretary of State has apologised for that. We also agree with the ombudsman that the women did not suffer any direct financial loss from the delay.

The question is about the impact of the delay in sending those letters. However, the evidence taken as a whole, including that from 2007, suggests that the majority of 1950s-born women would not have read and recalled the contents of an unsolicited pensions letter, even if it had been sent earlier. Further, the evidence also suggests that those less knowledgeable about pensions, the very women who most needed to engage with a letter and where it might have made a difference, were least likely to read it. An earlier letter would therefore have been unlikely to make a difference to what the majority of women knew about their own state pension age. Indeed, the 2007 report concluded that automatic pension forecast letters had only a negligible impact on pensions knowledge and planning and the department stopped sending them.

The evidence also shows that the vast majority of 1950s-born women already knew that the state pension age was increasing thanks to a wide range of public information, including in leaflets, through education campaigns, in GP surgeries, on TV and radio, in cinemas and online.

To compensate specifically only those women who suffered injustice would require a scheme that could reliably verify the individual circumstances of millions of women. That includes whether someone genuinely did not know the state pension age was changing and whether they would have read and remembered a letter from many years ago and acted differently. It would not be practical to set up a compensation scheme to assess conclusively the answers to those questions.

The alternative might be to introduce a targeted scheme, which we considered could possibly allow people to self-certify, but that could not be done in a way that was fair and represents value for money. Even if we asked women to self-certify that they experienced injustice, we would have no way of verifying it. As for a flat-rate scheme, it would cost up to £10.3 billion and would simply not be right or fair, given that it would be paid to the vast majority who were aware of the changes.

I fully recognise the strength of feeling on this issue. Many women born in the 1950s have experienced significant disadvantage, not least in the labour market. We will continue working towards equality for women in the workplace now and in future, and ensure that those with lower pension outcomes due to the inequalities they have faced in the past receive the right support. We are delivering support to low-income pensioners and pensioners more broadly by increasing the rate of the state pension, supporting the poorest through pension credit, and investing more money in the NHS to reduce waiting lists and to strengthen vital services.

For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, mentioned, our pension credit take-up campaign has been promoted to eligible pensioners and their friends and family. That is having a good effect and I would be very happy to talk more on that if noble Lords are interested. We are seeing significant numbers of increases in claims and awards, which is really helpful.

I turn to a couple of the other specific points that were mentioned. The noble Baroness challenged us as to why Labour in opposition took a different view. I will just say two things to her. The first is that she will appreciate, having been both in opposition and in government, that there is information that one has in government that one does not have when one is in opposition. We understand that many people are unhappy with what has happened. Although she is suggesting that it is entirely Labour’s fault, I suggest to her that quite a bit of the anger is about the rise in the state pension age and, in particular, the decision of the coalition Government to accelerate that in 2011, which meant a significant number of women finding that their state pension age went back more quickly than they had expected.

This decision is not about that; we need to separate the two things. We considered the ombudsman’s report very carefully, not just once but twice, and gave it due and proper process, including the information that Ministers were not able to see before they were in government. We concluded that it is right to apologise for the maladministration, but we believe that the decision we have taken on remedy and compensation is the right one.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that is the reason we made the decision. We accepted the ombudsman’s finding of maladministration. We did not accept the ombudsman’s approach to injustice for the reasons that I have explained about the impact of the not sending of those letters. The finding was narrowly about a 28-month delay. Because the evidence suggests that the majority of women were aware that the state pension age was changing, we do not accept that it is possible, on that basis, to construct a compensation scheme that would be targeted at those who experienced injustice.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, challenged me about the ombudsman. The ombudsman did their job, and the findings were fully and properly considered, but decisions on a compensation scheme of this scale are properly for Ministers and the Government to take. That is the case and, indeed, always will be.

This is a challenging issue, but it was right for the Secretary of State to review the evidence and to reach a decision based on due process and on the body of evidence. Looking forward to the future, we are taking important steps to support women in retirement to make sure that things like this do not happen again and to help them to build a better life for themselves and their families.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I should let the House know that I am joint chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women, which serves to bring the concerns of many 1950s women to the attention of parliamentarians. I am glad that my noble friend the Minister, in answering the question, accepted the Government’s previous position that there was maladministration here. The Statement itself does not use the word. I was going to ask whether the Government still accept that there was maladministration; clearly they do, because my noble friend used the word twice.

My concern about this Statement is that it says:

“We also agree with the ombudsman that women did not suffer any direct financial loss from the delay”.


The trouble with that is that it ignores the first part of paragraph 12 in the ombudsman’s report, which puts that into context:

“We find that maladministration in DWP’s communication about the 1995 Pensions Act resulted in complainants losing opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently, and diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control”.


The report goes on at a later stage to say that this is a material injustice. So, although there was no financial loss, there was a material injustice found by the ombudsman. I could ask a whole series of questions, but my specific question is: do the Government accept that damages can be ordered by the ombudsman even when there was no direct financial loss? The Government appear to put considerable weight on the idea that there was direct financial loss, but there has never been a requirement by the ombudsman to require the Government to pay compensation. Does my noble friend accept that point?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not. I will try to explain. We accept the PHSO’s—the ombudsman’s—findings on maladministration, but we specifically do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice. The reason for that is that the evidence taken as a whole, including the evidence from 2007, suggests that the majority of 1950s-born women would not have read and recalled the contents of an unsolicited letter. As I said, those less knowledgeable about pensions, the ones to whom it would have made the most difference, were less likely to read it. Therefore, the point is that a letter would have been unlikely to make a difference to what the majority of women knew about their own state pension age.

It is on that basis that we decided it would not be appropriate to pay financial compensation. We accept that the ombudsman recommends it, but it is based on the ombudsman’s approach to injustice, which we do not accept. If we do not accept that it is possible to construct a compensation scheme to compensate only those who have suffered injustice, because we believe the vast majority of those knew that state pension age was changing, then it would not be appropriate and that is the basis of the decision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, tempting though it is, I will save my wider comments on the Pension Schemes Bill for tomorrow, when I look forward to seeing the noble Lord once again in Grand Committee. It has been a great delight in recent weeks and I look forward to having the pleasure of discussing these things again tomorrow.

In answer to his questions, the decision was not inevitable. The Secretary of State looked at the evidence, assessed it all carefully and made a decision. Having made that decision based on the evidence, he issued a statement and put his reasons for the decision in the decision document which has been placed in the Library of the House.

I have two further points. One is serious, in that I agree on the importance of people saving. The Government are pursuing the Pension Schemes Bill and all the measures in it to make sure people get proper returns on their money, to ensure people can save more. That is why we set up the Pensions Commission to look at questions of adequacy. Secondly, if the noble Lord’s Government had really wanted certainty on this matter, they could have made their decision at any point before the election—but they did not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following the previous question, I note that saving for a pension is extraordinarily difficult for so many people who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. It is really important not to preach to them about savings that they cannot possibly make.

I declare an interest in that I first met the WASPI women in 2015 and advised them on their first petition to Parliament. I am afraid I had to somewhat gently say that yes, they would get 100,000 signatures on that petition and Parliament would debate it, but it did not mean that the obvious sense of their argument would suddenly win. Politics does not work like that. So, here we are now in 2026.

My question to the Minister refers to one particular WASPI woman I met on the road outside here. She had quit her job at the age of 59 because her company was making redundancies. She thought she would get a pension very soon, so she left and took the redundancy so that younger people could keep their jobs. She then found that she would not get her pension for years. She ran out of the redundancy money and ended up on jobseeker’s allowance. She applied for job after job and did not get them. She had been an office manager for decades for a medium-sized enterprise. Then, the Department for Work and Pensions insisted that, to keep her jobseeker’s allowance, she must go on a CV-writing course and a whole lot of other really basic pieces of training. She felt utterly mistreated and abused.

I understand why the terminology in this Statement is the way that it is, and that the Government are talking in careful legalese, but as we have seen in reports today, the WASPI women are planning to fight on, and good on them. More than that, can the Minister understand how people who have been put through that ringer of a decade of poverty and struggle, and of being thoroughly disrespected by the system, would also like to hear words that acknowledge that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, and I am grateful to her for bringing an experience into the conversation, rather than talking in generalities. Obviously, she will understand why I cannot comment on the individual’s situation, but she makes a number of really important points there, which I would like to acknowledge. Clearly, there were a number of women who had hoped to retire early and then found they were retiring later. The challenge is that the specifics of this decision were about what difference it would have made had those letters been sent 28 months earlier, because that is what the ombudsman’s finding was about. I know that the issues people are angry about are much wider than that, so the debate has been much wider than that, but that is what the Government had to respond to, which is why it has been said in the way it has.

I was also sorry to hear that that individual did not get the support she would have wanted from the DWP. The Government are now investing very heavily in supporting people of all ages. Some of them find they are not well enough to be in the labour market until retirement; others want to get a job but find it is difficult, and it is hard to be older. But we are investing heavily in trying to support people in all those circumstances, such as those who find that their health is struggling but would still like to get back into work because they are not ready to retire, and those who want to carry on because they need the money. We are investing a lot in our work programmes and work coaches, tailoring the support there. I really hope that if that woman came along to a jobcentre tomorrow, she would get a warm welcome and someone to support her, enabling her to do that. In the meantime, the benefits system provides support for those who cannot work but are not yet ready to retire. I thank the noble Baroness for sharing that experience.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has made the case for why the Government did not provide any compensation. Quite clearly, the retirement age had to be aligned fairly quickly. In the interests of fairness, we would all support that. But will she accept that, in the wake of what the ombudsman said, the group of WASPI women has once again felt led up the garden path, feeling that they are going to get something at last only to be let down again?

One of the most depressing things in this whole saga is the conviction that these individuals, despite the delay—the maladministration in informing them—would not really have taken any notice of the letters anyhow. Could the Minister tell the House quite what the Government are doing to make sure that people are well aware of what their retirement package will be? The pensions dashboard is all very well, but it is clearly not going to reach the parts that have failed to have been reached in the past. Given how hard retirement will be for a lot of people, is she sure that they are now getting the message?

[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.

[Baroness Nichols of Selby (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is obviously a very difficult situation? I know noble Lords might not believe this, but I speak as a WASPI woman born towards the end of the 1950s. It might have been different for those born between 1950 and 1957, but I am absolutely certain I got a letter telling me that. The issue around women retiring at 60 and men at 65 was done from a post office worker in York, I understand. It was always going to be difficult, because they were never going to put men’s down to 60; it was always going to be the other way around.

I also had a friend who worked in the department at the time, who was absolutely certain that letters did go out. We cannot guarantee that everybody got one, but he is absolutely certain that people probably did. Women sometimes made choices. When I got married, I did not have the option of paying the small stamp, the married woman’s stamp, but people before me did. So, it is about getting that message out to people now that you cannot rely on somebody else’s pension support; you have to do it for yourself.

[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.