4.3m children living in poverty, up 100,000 on previous year, DWP figures show – UK politics live

We note, however, our view that the contract meant ICE could not address complainants’ key concern that they did not have as much personal notice of changes to their State Pension age as they should have.

We do not consider there was sufficient evidence available for ICE to conclude that DWP had written to individual complainants who said they had never received a letter about their State Pension age.

We find that maladministration in DWP’s complaint handling caused complainants unnecessary stress and anxiety and meant an opportunity to lessen their distress was lost.

Given the significant concerns we have that it will fail to act on our findings and given the need to make things right for the affected women as soon as possible, we have proactively asked parliament to intervene and hold the department to account.

It is not clear how the government will respond, but in an interview with the Daily Telegraph published this morning Stride opened himself up to criticism on another front, by claiming that concern for people’s mental health may have gone “too far”.

Stride also told the paper that he feared some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.