Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what notification was given to women affected by the Pensions Act 1995.
Following the Pensions Act 1995, State Pension estimates, issued to individuals on request, made the changes clear. The DWP’s State Pension estimates have been providing individuals with their most up-to-date date of reaching State Pension age since 1995. Over that period, we have encouraged anyone seeking to plan for their retirement to get a pension statement. Since April 2000, the Department has issued more than 11.5 million personalised State Pension statements to people who requested them. We continue to encourage people to request one, as part of our on-going communications.
DWP also ran a pensions education campaign in 2004, which included informing people of the future equalisation of SPA. The campaign included:
In addition to these efforts, all those affected by the 1995 Act changes were sent letters between April 2009 and March 2011 using the address details held by HMRC at that time.