Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the opportunity to relitigate the rights and wrongs of equalising the retirement age at 65 or even 66. Unusually, this was signalled well in advance. When I started my career in 1990, 36 years ago, our private scheme equalised pension retirement age at 63 and only five years later, the state followed at 65. It has been known for a long time.

As the Times newspaper said over the weekend, hyperbolic language about appalling utter “betrayals” and so forth could be applied to other state failings, but not this. Elsewhere, consequential changes introduced overnight with no notice, consultation or communication should be questioned. I am thinking about IHT on private businesses, the taxation of private pensions upon death and the introduction of huge increases in national insurance overnight. They are the sort of things for which hyperbolic language should be reserved.

Therefore, I am not going to line up and criticise the decision. It is one the last Government concluded was the right one and it is one that this Government have also agreed with. If I do have a regret, it is over all the nods and winks that were given to a group of women—and the cynic in me notes that this rhetoric was delivered in the pre-election period in a most regrettable manner. It is plain as a pikestaff that if the Government had weakened on this one measure, at a cost of over £10 billion, where would it have ended?

So, while the Government have marched the WASPI women all the way up to the top of the hill and down again, like the grand old Duke of York, the outcome was always inevitable. But that is a problem, because the false hope that was given has undermined confidence in the pension system among those who should be saving the hardest. Saving for a pension is a good thing; it fosters personal responsibility, security and safety for self and family—suffering pain today for pleasure tomorrow. It therefore needs long-term stability but successive measures such as reducing incentives to save for the future, undermining confidence in the system itself and adding complexity in the Pension Schemes Bill before this House make it worse. We are seeing mandation, where the Chancellor can tell funds what to invest in, size limits, where there is a veto for existing players to keep out an innovative competitor, preventing certain types of investment from being eligible into pension funds and so forth. Even salary sacrifice changes, which noble Lords will be debating on Wednesday, will incentivise employers to drop incentives altogether.

Taken together, these mixed messages—WASPI women included—have undermined the long-term thinking that everyone needs to save for a pension and have understandably led to the feeling of complexity, that, “Well, personal pensions are just not really for me”. Consequently, too many people are putting too much into tangible assets they can touch and in which they have confidence, which is driving bubbles. That was good business until last Friday, but now silver is down one-third and crypto is down 40% over the last few days. With this complexity in mind, does the Minister agree that when it comes to pensions, less is more? Does she agree that acquired, stable, patient capital is much better, so that those who want to save can do so and do not rely upon the state in old age?