Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak so early in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) on securing this debate. There is not much more that can be said, as she has put the case so eloquently, but there is one key point I want to get on the record: broadly speaking, as the hon. Lady eloquently said, this issue crosses the House and there is a broad understanding that there has been an injustice. For me, this is about fairness and what will happen going forward if people lose faith in organisations such as the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) on securing this debate, and I thank her for her work. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is about trust in Government and a betrayal of trust for all of us who stood there with placards saying, “I support the WASPI women”? They should be following that up.

[Tom Gordon]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. At a time when trust in Government and politicians is so low, it is imperative that we do all we can in this place to right that wrong.

To get an idea of the level of support across the House, I would like to see a vote in Parliament about whether we should have a fair compensation scheme. Whenever I speak to WASPI women in my constituency or elsewhere, the main thing they want is to be listened to. The key thread that resonates with all these women is that they feel completely sidelined and ignored. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) made the point earlier that parties of all persuasions have held placards and made promises and pledges—and the Liberal Democrats know all too well about the danger of making promises that cannot be delivered on. I would like all parties and all politicians to be held accountable for the promises that they failed to deliver on.

I represent a place that is broadly characterised as fairly affluent and wealthy, but there are real issues with poverty in Harrogate and Knaresborough, though it is often hidden. The hon. Member for Salford eloquently made the point that when WASPI women were growing up and working, they were already disadvantaged, and this is a further disadvantage. It is incumbent on us all to right that wrong.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is an issue not only of justice, but of equality between men and women? If this Government are serious about tackling inequality at all levels, they must surely listen to the women in all our constituencies on this issue. I have been inundated with correspondence from constituents about this, and the Government must tackle it.

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[Tom Gordon]

I completely agree. I do not intend to speak for much longer, so I will wrap up. For me, this represents a fundamental flaw in the system. It is a complete failure of the ombudsman if, after there has been maladministration, it cannot get us in this place to push for the change that it has outlined. That maladministration is not up for debate; it was a finding of the report. We hear harrowing stories from women who have lost houses, ended up in debt and faced horrendous situations as a result of something that they did not know about. This is about fixing that problem and righting that wrong.

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[Tom Gordon]

Does the right hon. Member agree that we cannot put a price on justice?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I do indeed. Of course, in any event, the women realise that they will not get anything like full compensation, but they want the symbolic acceptance and acknowledgement of the injustice that they have received. As we have heard from those on both sides of the House, this resistance puts at stake the credibility of the ombudsman system itself. Undermining that will have a knock-on effect: in many future cases, the bill for implementing an ombudsman’s recommendations and findings will not be anything like as large, but people and institutions will be emboldened to defy the ombudsman.

One of the best short summaries of the case was put forward in a previous Labour manifesto, which said:

“a generation of women born in the 1950s have had their pension age changed without fair notification. This betrayal left millions of women with no time to make alternative plans—with sometimes devastating personal consequences.

Labour recognises this injustice, and will work with these women to design a system of recompense for the losses and insecurity they have suffered.”

Admittedly, that was the 2019 manifesto, and Labour at that time was led by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but that does not mean that the manifesto was wrong in what it said. It was absolutely right in its summary and its recognition that something must be done.

Indeed, when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was in opposition in the last Parliament, she was cautious in what she said about the ombudsman’s report, but she did acknowledge the following:

“we will take time to give the report proper consideration too, and continue to listen respectfully to those involved, as we have done from the start.”

She added:

“we won’t be able to right every wrong overnight.”

That would have been the basis for at least an attempt to give the symbolic redress and acknowledgement that I think most fair-minded people agree is due.

If the Government had come back and said, “We can’t implement the ombudsman’s recommendations in full at the moment, but we shall try and do it in stages, or over a period, or will at least go some way towards a symbolic acceptance of the wrong that has been done,” I think most reasonable people would have understood the situation and have been willing to at least consider some sort of compromise.

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[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

Let me start by giving credit to the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) for her very powerful speech and for all the work that she has done on this campaign over the years, and to many other Labour Members who have spoken so well today, particularly the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who I always listen to with respect on this topic and, indeed, on some others.

It has been good to hear from Members. I particularly welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), who is a great new addition to this place. We see here the true voice of the Labour party. It is the Labour movement at its best, and I pay tribute to Labour Members for their campaigning on this topic. They are the heroes of the movement. We also have the heroes of the Conservative party behind me—my good friends the knights of the shires—whom it is an honour to listen to. It is like listening to Edmund Burke when my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) speaks about duty and responsibility.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Salford and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings on their work together on this campaign, which, a few months ago, secured the very significant Westminster Hall debate that has been mentioned. On that day, as if the product of their work, out popped, fresh and pink, the new Minister, who was appointed to his role on that day, as if for the very purpose of answering the question of what should be done for the WASPI women. There was hope of great things from him, but I am afraid to say that we were disappointed on that day. He could offer no hope at all, yet since then we have seen a whole series of U-turns. They have become fashionable on the Government Front Bench, and who knows what we may hear the from Minister today.

I recognise, and I am sure the Minister will stress, how difficult it is to address the very complicated circumstances of the very many women caught up in the pension age changes. As I am sure he will say, the ombudsman has recognised that there was no direct impact on pensioners’ incomes from the maladministration and the miscommunication of which the DWP was guilty in the 2000s. However, as Members have said— I particularly recognise the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—women made decisions about their future, and about their life, in ignorance of their true circumstances. The failure by the DWP to successfully and appropriately communicate with the women caused them to make decisions that directly disadvantaged them.

It is simply not credible, and I hope the Minister will not advance this argument, to say that correspondence from the Government is essentially pointless and has no value. That would be to suggest that there is no point in any Government communication by post. Of course, women were not advised of the changes in the circumstances, and that was the fault of the Government of the day. As many Members have said, and I acknowledge the powerful point made by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), women deserve so much more. As she said, our constituents feel that they have been robbed not just of their money, but of their dignity as a consequence of these decisions.

What is to be done? There has been a series of suggestions about how we might go forward. On a point of process, I do not agree with the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon)—and I am concerned that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings seemed to agree with him—that the ombudsman’s report should in effect be binding on the Government. I do not think that is appropriate, because these are sovereign decisions that the Government, accountable to Parliament, should be making. However, I agree with the hon. Member and others that these reports should be respected by the Government, and I feel that simply did not happen in this case.

[Tom Gordon]

It is becoming a habit of mine to intervene on the hon. Member. He says that the report should be respected, but should not be binding, so what does he have in mind, and how would it look?

[Danny Kruger]

It is absolutely essential that the points made in the ombudsman’s report are fully acknowledged by the Government, and it is necessary, as I will explain, that some meaningful redress is made to the victims of the DWP’s maladministration.

The hon. Member for Salford suggested that there could be another review of the system by the Minister for Social Security and Disability, but I do not think that the magic words, “Timms review”, will get the Government out of this hole. He has enough on his hands sorting out the mess they have made on benefits, so this is a job for this Minister, who is a very clever man, and I have great confidence in him.

The suggestion made by some Members of mediation may be usefully taken forward. However, as my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said, it is simply insulting of the Government to make absolutely no redress and no acknowledgement of the injustice that the WASPI women have endured, and it is appropriate for some meaningful acknowledgement to be made.

It is not for me to rescue the Government from the consequences of their own incontinence—their fiscal folly—which has got them into the mess they are in, but they have made several discretionary payments since they came to power. There were the salary increases for train drivers, without any improvement in productivity; the creation of a multibillion-pound energy company that makes no energy; our paying another country billions of pounds to take over sovereign territory belonging to the UK; and, of course, all the U-turns that have imposed significant new costs on the taxpayer, including those costing £5 billion this week alone. Obviously, Government can make discretionary payments if they want to; these are sovereign decisions that they can make.

Crucially, any such decision must be funded. We saw this week that the Government essentially fell apart as a consequence of a whole series of bad decisions made in the Treasury. Parliament rose up against the Treasury and demanded change. The decision making at the heart of the Government has been woeful for the past year since Labour has come to office. I pay tribute to the parliamentarians who resisted that this week. This is a new opportunity for the Government to put right a mistake, and I look forward to hearing how the Minister proposes to do that.