Oral Answers to Questions

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of providing compensation to women born in the 1950s affected by changes to the state pension age.

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

22. What recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of implementing the recommendations in the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report entitled “Women’s State Pension age: our findings on injustice and associated issues”, published on 21 March 2024.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Member has raised this issue repeatedly over a number of years, and I recognise that. Specifically on the issues he raises, it was the ombudsman itself, rather than the Government, that initially set out that the women affected did not suffer direct financial loss. What is sitting behind the ombudsman’s judgment saying that is that the issue facing the ombudsman was not either the original decision in 1995 to increase the state pension age or the decision to accelerate the increase by the coalition Government in 2011. The ombudsman was looking narrowly at the question of how that increase in the state pension age was communicated, and I think it is really important to clarify that distinction with our constituents. It is the latter—the communication of the state pension age—that we have discussed in this House on numerous occasions.

The hon. Member specifically raises the 2007 evidence, which showed that a minority of people read and remembered such letters. However, it showed something else quite important, which was that those with good knowledge of their state pension entitlement were most likely to read the letters. It was therefore not a good metric for assuming that the majority of those who were sent letters would have learned something from that and changed what they knew.

[Seamus Logan]

These women were not properly informed about changes to their state pension. So said the PHSO on 21 March 2024, just in time for the election that year, when so many Labour Members of course promised to address the issue, if elected—another shameful, broken promise. First, can I ask the Minister to explain why the last ministerial meeting with the WASPI women took place in September 2024? Secondly, can he tell the House what work has been undertaken in his Department on a properly structured compensation scheme that could be implemented when the Government decide it is time for another U-turn?

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Member raises a question about what Labour Members were promising in the 2024 election. As I am sure he is aware, our manifesto was clear that it did not make a commitment to bring forward compensation. What is the case is that Labour Members opposed the acceleration of the state pension age back in 2011, which in some cases gave women only five years’ notice. However, we of course lost that vote in Parliament and subsequent elections, and the courts unfortunately upheld that decision. As I have said, what we are debating in this case is the communications, not the decision itself. On those grounds, we have set out in detail the reasons for the decisions we have made and laid that document in the House of Commons Library.