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A boss at the Department for Work and Pensions told member of congress He was “surprised” to see a letter from the ombudsman raising concerns about how the department was learning from issues affecting women in Wasps.
The development of an action plan began following an investigation into how to communicate state pension reform to the women of Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality).
But Paula, head of the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PSHO) sussex In a letter to the Chairman, he said work and pensions committee Debbie Abrahams said she was told in November that work on the action plan “had been put on hold to prioritize supporting ministers in re-making decisions about whether to offer financial compensation”.
In her letter, Ms Sussex said she was “gravely concerned about the significant delays in implementing the action”. Distributed Water Plan Committed to engaging with my office regarding the State Pension Age Inquiry.”
The letter said Ms Sussex welcomed “the committee’s support to ensure positive changes are made to ensure the failures experienced by Wasp women are not repeated”.
Giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee on Wednesday, Sir Peter Schofield, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, told the committee: “The PSHO copied me on the letter. To be honest, I was surprised to see the letter.”
“Let me talk about the work we have done with the PSHO, particularly the action plan and how seriously we are taking it.
“It is clear that as early as December 17, 2024, the then Secretary of State made a decision on the Waspi case, including a commitment to work with the Ombudsman to develop an action plan.
“So as soon as we met, I met with the interim ombudsman, Paula Sussex’s predecessor, on January 16, 2025, so that we could meet as quickly as possible.
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“We mapped out how to work together to develop an action plan.
“I think it took them and us a while to mobilize, but we then had two workshops in April and June.
“We agreed on the outcomes of these action plans, one for complaints and one for communications.
“In light of this, we have subsequently developed an action plan within the department, working with all relevant teams to develop the plan based on the findings from the workshops we held with the ombudsman.
“Then there’s a working draft done at the end of the summer and then we have to have an impact across the department because we have to make sure it’s deliverable and a lot of teams are going to be affected.
“We had a working draft Secretary of State On November 11, he issued a statement to the House of Representatives saying that he would revisit the decision on Waspi.
“Now, I mean, this is a serious government move to make a decision again.
“It does mean that we are unable to implement previous decisions, of which the action plan was part.
“I met with the ombudsman before Christmas and I explained how we were progressing with our action plan and she said she wanted to know we had been making progress so I showed her the draft action plan.
“To be honest, I thought she was relieved. I thought she would tell me if she was worried, but she wrote you a letter instead.”
On November 11 last year, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said his department would review policies that would not compensate women born in the 1950s who would be affected by an increase in the pension age.
A previous PHSO report said compensation of between £1,000 and £2,950 may be appropriate for everyone affected by the way the changes to the state pension are communicated.
In December 2024, the British government had previously said that while it accepted the ombudsman’s findings of maladministration and apologized for the delay in sending a letter to women born in the 1950s, a compensation package that could cost taxpayers up to 10.5 billion pounds was unreasonable.
Sir Peter told the committee: “While I have described the work of the action plan, the other thing I really want to convey to the committee is that we are actually taking action in terms of ensuring that our communications are correct.
“So, you know, we currently have a series of campaigns called ‘Check Your State Pension Age’ which we will review in April.
“This builds on previous campaigns, one on ‘Understanding your state pension’ and another on ‘Is the retirement you get the retirement you want?’.
“We have online tools like ‘Check Your State Pension Age’ and ‘Check Your State Pension Forecast’ that allow anyone to go into the system, look at their National Insurance contribution record and allow them to see what their forecast is and what their state pension age is.”
He added: “We’ve done a lot of work on this and we already have a pension dashboard scheme.”
Sir Peter told him it was more than a year since the action plan was first announced, saying: “There is a formal, serious exercise going on here…the government is re-taking a very important decision.”
He said the action plan stemmed from a previous decision and was currently being re-examined, adding: “Therefore, the formal government process is ongoing. This means that I have to stop working on the implementation of the previous decision.”
“That’s our official position.”
Asked whether he thought this would lead to a different plan of action, Sir Peter said: “Obviously I can’t comment on the Secretary of State’s decision, which I’m sure will come very soon. So we’ll see.”
“But the ombudsman knows how progress is being made on our action plan, which she has seen in draft, which is based on a series of interactions we have had with her people, and which we are taking to ensure people understand their state pension age and their state pension status.”