A senior leader of the DWP has set out a key lesson the Government needs to take from the WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) controversy.
Peter Schofield, Permanent Secretary of the DWP, was asked by the Work and Pensions Committee this week (May 22) what lessons the Government should learn from the debacle, which affected some 3.8 million women.
He said: “It goes back to the conversation of how we engage with our customers. How do we make it easier for our customers to understand changes that are being made?
“One of the things that’s happened over the last few years is, it is much easier to use our online systems to find out when your state pension age is, but also to check your National Insurance record, check your state pension and how that works.
“We’ve now introduced much more recently an ability to go online and see where you stand in terms of your ability to make voluntary National Insurance contributions and to do that online.
“Just to give people the confidence of how do they understand the nature of what their income will be in retirement and what they need to do to support that.”
There are growing calls for the Government to bring forward plans for compensation, with a debate held on the issue in Parliament in recent days.
One MP told Express.co.uk previously that the women should get payouts of £10,000 or more.
Mr Schofield also told the committee further improvements to the pension system are on the way with the upcoming pensions dashboard, a scheme to allow an individual to see all their pensions in one place online.
He added: “These are all things that we’re doing to try and make it easier for millions of people to know where they stand in terms of their income in retirement and to make provision for that where they can in their working age.”
Sitting next to him to take questions from the MPs was Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride.
He refused to commit to a timetable for providing compensation, pointing out that one complication is many WASPI women “suffered no injustice at all”.
He explained: “Those are things that one is having to consider along with lots of others incidentally, in order to try and come to something that is fair, acceptable and right. It is quite a challenge.”
WASPI campaign chair, Angela Madden, was in the visitors gallery listening listening to his answers.
She told Express.co.uk: “We did shake his hand at the end of the session and say we’d love to work with him on it [setting a timetable].
“He said hopefully there will be a meeting in the near future, so he was non-committal but he did say hopefully we can set up a meeting.”
She said she hopes the committee will continue to put pressure on the minister to set out a timetable for compensation.
She explained: “They will consider his evidence this afternoon and I’m sure there will be an outcome from that.
“If they could press him on at least a timetable, we’d know when they’re going to start bringing this to a close.”
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