No. 

There are so many aspects of this sorry business that I could talk about: the financial hardship suffered, the mass of maladministration complaints, the unfair way in which the changes were introduced, the blatant discrimination and the mismanagement of changes, but, being called late into this debate, I'm going to focus my comments on the outrageous way in which women were notified, or rather, more accurately, were not notified, of changes in their state pension arrangements and the impact on one particular constituent of mine to demonstrate how wide and broad the impact has been. 

Like other Members, I know, I've met women who've told me that they were given little notice by the UK Government of this life-changing decision, and, indeed, as we know, some were never notified at all, because in March 2011 the Government stopped writing to women affected because of further changes that were in the pipeline, and they did not resume writing to women affected until January 2012. The impact of this was that many WASPI women received a letter advising them of significant increases to their state pension age when they were 59, and that was within one year of the significant increases to the state pension age and just one year from the date that they had expected to receive their pension. Be under no illusion: as we have heard several contributors say, this change is resulting in real hardship. It represents a loss of anticipated income for so many women, who, at such short notice, have had no time to prepare for these changes.

But let me now outline the story of one of my constituents, caught out by the changes not by having to work longer but because of her disability. She was born in 1954 and has significant learning disabilities. At 63 years of age, she is unable to read, write, tell the time or manage money—she relied on her parents as carers. After her father passed away 10 years ago, her primary carer was her mother, who had to deal with all her financial matters and with Government bureaucracy around benefits and so on. Understandably, as her mother was dealing with all of her affairs, most of the paperwork was in her mother's name. Sadly, her mother also passed away a couple of years ago. After losing her mother, my constituent's sister became involved in assisting with her needs. Just a few days after their mother's death, my constituent's sister came home to find her very upset, saying that somebody had rung her to say that she had to go somewhere. But, as she didn't retain information well, she was unable to relay the information about where she had to go, or even who it was who'd contacted her, and she became increasingly distressed.

To cut a very long story short, her sister eventually managed to establish that it was the Department for Work and Pensions calling my constituent for a fitness-to-work assessment. It was at this point that my constituent's sister started to realise that her own sister with disabilities was not yet on a state pension, as she had always assumed she would be. Of course, had she been on a state pension at 60 years of age, the DWP wouldn't have been calling her in for a fitness-to-work assessment. There then started a nightmare of assessments to determine fitness to work, at which my constituent was becoming more and more afraid, agitated and distressed. She didn't know what was happening to her—it was a nightmare she would never have had to endure had she received her pension at age 60. 

So, although it was eventually accepted that she was not fit for work, and her benefits changed accordingly, she is still not old enough to receive the state pension. At a time of great emotional distress, having lost her mother—her constant companion, her only friend and her primary carer—and having never lived independently, within a matter of days she was having to deal with Government bureaucracy around fitness to work, all because she was at an age when women were no longer in receipt of the state pension and no-one knew about it. Goodness knows what would have happened to her if she had not had a sister who stepped in to take over that caring and supporting role.

This is just one example of the many difficulties caused by the change in the state pension age, a change that, for my constituent, neither she nor her family knew about and therefore had no plans or provision to deal with. It came about because of a lack of care in communicating the importance of these changes and what the financial impact on many individuals would be, and all of this compounded by the UK Government not being prepared to resolve the situation by introducing fair transitional arrangements to see these women, unprepared for such financial hardship, into retirement. How can—