Women's Pensions

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:26 pm on 1 March 2023.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 2:26, 1 March 2023

Thank you for that supplementary question. Just by way of general comment to your question, I think the treatment of women born in the 1950s by successive Conservative Governments remains a national scandal. Since the launch of the WASPI campaign in 2015, more than 200,000 WASPI women have died without ever seeing or receiving pension justice, so the women who continue to be affected by this issue have already been disadvantaged as a result of two hikes to the state pension age, and now we learn that the current UK Government is considering doing it all over again. Can I say that, since 2016, the Welsh Government has been writing to the UK Government to highlight our concerns regarding the communication of changes to the women’s state pension age? I will continue to make those representations. I will have to access the correspondence in respect of the replies that we have had, and I can write to you separately about that.

What I can also say though, is, of course, the latest findings from Stage 2 of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report are that there was a maladministration in the DWP’s communication about national insurance qualifying years, and complaint handling. And I believe that it must be the case that, for those who’ve been so adversely affected, the finding must be that that damage must be rectified and people must be properly compensated; the many thousands of people who had to carry on working year after year, despite the fact that the contract that they agreed—many, many years ago in their youth with regard to their pension age and what their entitlements would be—was broken. It was a sad breach and I believe they’re entitled to be properly compensated for that.