The Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) has asked for an update on the government's research into levels of awareness around the state pension age (SPA) among those approaching retirement.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Pat McFadden, recently appeared in front of the WPC, where he confirmed that the current government is planning to take forward work to learn lessons following the issues seen around previous increases in the SPA.

This follows the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's report, which found that "thousands” of women may have been affected by the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) failure to adequately inform them that the SPA had changed.

During the session, McFadden confirmed that the government is taking this work forward, with Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, "in the driving  seat directly", but with full support from McFadden. 

"We are working with the PHSO on this to come up with an action plan. This area of how we communicate with people and how it changes over time and how people get their information is relevant to government policy," he stated.

Adding to this, DWP permanent secretary, Peter Schofield, confirmed that this also covers complaint handling.

"We have agreed that we will have six-monthly reviews," he stated "I met the new ombudsman earlier in the year and we talked briefly about this, but this is being led at working level and, as the Secretary of State says, we are learning about the best way of communicating as technology and people’s means of receiving information changes.

"How we work with that, alongside how we respond to complaints, which is another element of this work, are the two main headings for the action plan."

The WPC has since followed up to confirm the timeline for this work, also requesting a separate update on the work being done on the levels of awareness among people approaching state pension age. 

Abrahams also queried what will be included in the government's review of the decision not to award compensation to women affected by state pension age changes, as McFadden recently confirmed that this would be revisited, following the emergence of previously unseen evidence in ongoing legal proceedings.

In particular, Abrahams asked whether the update will include an explanation of how it came about that the 2007 research was not in front of the former Secretary of State when she made her decision, what steps the government will take to ensure that, in future, relevant research is made available, and whether the report itself was provided to the PHSO for its investigation.

Abrahams also followed up on issues relating to the AEAT pension scheme, stating that while the plans to index for inflation on pre-1997 pension benefits in the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) and Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS), outstanding issues remain in the case of the AEAT scheme.

"This scheme went into the PPF in 2012, with the result that scheme members no longer received indexation on pre-1997 benefits," Abrahams explained.

"While scheme members will no doubt welcome the change in policy announced in the Budget, two decades of non-indexation on pre-1997 benefits have eroded the spending power of their pensions significantly and it is not yet clear what scope there will be to address this within any amendments to the Bill that the government brings forward."

Abrahams noted that the predecessor WPC supported a recommendation by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the government should “ensure that members’ complaints about the AEAT pension case can be independently reviewed, for example by a relevant ombudsman.”

However, Abrahams pointed out that, while most recently, the government said it planned to report back to the PAC on this in August 2025, the PAC has not yet received such a report, calling for an update on the progress of this review.

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