Yahoo News DWP boss due to face questions on state pension age compensation for WASPI women
Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride MP, is set to face an accountability session with the Work and Pensions Committee this week. The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, May 22 at 9.25am, will scrutinise the work of his Department as well as recent UK Government announcements and policy developments.
The head of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), alongside Permanent Secretary Peter Schofield, will likely be questioned on the UK Government's approach to welfare reform. This includes the latest plans to alter how eligibility is assessed for the health aspect of Universal Credit, the timeline for further migration from legacy benefit claimants, and the recently published 'Fraud and Error' report.
The committee may also raise issues they have recently contacted the DWP about, such as the department's efforts to tackle Carer's Allowance overpayments and the UK Government's response to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's (PHSO) report on changes to women's State Pension age. Discussion on this topic will likely include questions regarding a compensation plan for the estimated 3.8 million women affected by State Pension age changes.
Read more:
Sir Stephen Timms, the chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, penned a letter to Mel Stride last week, following a verbal evidence session on May 7 with the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) Campaign and the PHSO regarding their final report into changes made to the State Pension age for women born in the 1950s, reports the Daily Record.
The PHSO concluded its six-year investigation with a final report published on March 21, stating that the DWP failed to adequately communicate changes to women's State Pension age, and those affected are due compensation. The Ombudsman has called on Parliament to "act swiftly" to establish a compensation scheme based on these findings.
In his letter, the Labour MP urged the UK Government to "bring forward proposals for a remedy by the summer recess."
Parliament is scheduled to break for the summer on July 23.
The letter reads: "As you are aware, the PHSO laid its report before Parliament on March 21 2024, asking Parliament to 'identify an appropriate mechanism for providing remedy' for women born in the 1950s who have suffered injustice because of DWP's maladministration in its communication of increases in their State Pension Age (SPA) legislated for in the Pensions Act 1995."
"In a one-off evidence session on the issue on May 7, we were reminded of the need for urgent action, given that the ombudsman started to look at this issue in 2018 and that every 13 minutes a woman born in the 1950s dies."
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has suggested compensation at Level 4 on its scale, which ranges between £1,000 and £2,950. However, the WASPI Campaign and some MPs, including the SNP's Alan Brown, are pushing for the maximum Level 6 compensation, starting at £10,000.
East Ham MP Stephen Timms remarked that the committee has "not sought to question the PHSO's proposal for compensation at level 4, but instead have focused on what a remedy might look like".
Sir Stephen elaborated: "The evidence we received indicated support for a rules-based system. This would be a system where payments would be adjusted within a range (based on the PHSO's severity of injustice scale) to reflect the extent of change in the individual's state pension age and the notice of the change which the individual received."
He added: "This would mean that the less notice you had of the change and the bigger the change in your SPA, the higher the payment you would receive. While not perfect, the advantages of such a system are that it would be: quick to administer; applying known data to a formula to determine the amount due; and relatively inexpensive."
The letter also called for some leeway for individuals to argue their case for additional compensation after receiving the initial payment determined by the rules-based system, particularly if they suffered direct financial loss and warrant a higher compensation level.
The letter underlined testimonials from Angela Madden, chair of the WASPI Campaign, saying her earlier assertions to the committee noted that lesser divorce settlements were allotted to women due to the provision for a pension age of 60.
In the same letter, it was stated: "Implementing a remedy will need parliamentary time, financial resources, and the data and technical systems only available to your department. It cannot happen without government support. We would ask you to bring forward proposals for a remedy by the summer recess."
Talking about this correspondence, Sir Stephen voiced: "The debate over the impact of the DWP's failure to communicate increases in the women's state pension age has dragged on for too long and it is time the Government took action to resolve the issue.
"There is no perfect solution, but there would seem to be broad support for a rules-based system of compensation with a degree of flexibility for cases where women have experienced direct financial loss. While the ombudsman has put the matter in the hands of Parliament, a remedy can only happen with the support of the government and we hope ministers will move quickly to bring forward its proposal before the summer."
Adding her opinion on the actions taken by the committee, Ms Madden expressed: "Parliament's top pensions thinkers have spoken. It is now time for the Government to act and give the Commons as a whole its say. The committee is right to suggest there must be additional compensation for those many hundreds of thousands who suffered direct financial loss in addition to a fixed sum for all those affected by successive governments' failures.
"After years of campaigning, both the independent ombudsman and now a cross-party group of senior MPs have vindicated our position. For ministers to leave setting up a compensation scheme a moment longer is just delaying the inevitable and insulting our generation of women afresh." The WASPI campaign estimates about 3.8 million women have been impacted by changes to their state pension age.
A DWP spokesperson said: "We are considering the ombudsman's report and will respond in due course, having cooperated fully throughout this investigation."
"The government has always been committed to supporting all pensioners in a sustainable way that gives them a dignified retirement whilst also being fair to them and taxpayers."
"The state pension is the foundation of income in retirement and will remain so as we delivered a further 8.5 per cent rise last month, increasing the state pension for 12 million pensioners. This has seen the full rate of the new state pension rise by £900."
