The Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign has received a devastating blow as Labour has confirmed it will ignore an official payout recommendation for millions of women impacted by a historic state pension injustice.
Pensions minister Liz Kendall MP announced the news in Parliament earlier this afternoon in a move that will see thousands of women receive miss out on up to £3,000 in compensation.
During ministerial questions, Kendall took aim at the ombudsman’s report and claimed the proposed payments were not “fair or value for taxpayer money'”. She claimed “the great majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing”.
Despite Labour’s refusal to offer a compensation package, similar to victims of the infected blood and Post Office Horizon scandals, Kendall insisted she is sympathetic to the minority who are struggling as a result of change to pension age.
While speaking to MPs, the pensions minister cited that in the majority of cases, sending letters earlier would not have made a difference in the retirement prospects of Women women. On top of this, she accused the Conservative Party of “kicking it down the road” when it came to issue and pledged to deal with it “head on”.
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Liz Kendall gave an update to the Waspi campaign as to whether state pension compensation is on its way earlier this afternoon
PA
For years, Waspi campaigners have lobbied the Government to address the inequity that has arose from state pension age equalisation between the sexes due to millions of women being left unable to sufficiently prepare for retirement. Under the 1995 State Pension Act, the state pension age for women from 60 to 65/
Some 3.8 million women are estimated to have been detrimentally impacted by the move due to the way the age hike was implemented. In 2021, a report by the Parliament and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of “maladministration”.
This was due to inadequately informing women of the changes. Earlier this year, a follow-up reform from the ombudsman recommended a Level 4 payout to women born in the 1950s which comes to between £1,000 and £2,750.
Waspi campaign chair Angela Madden slammed the Government for failing to adhere by the PHSO’s findings and called on MPs to do right by women born in the 1950s.
She explained: “The Government has today made an unprecedented political choice to ignore the clear recommendations of an independent watchdog which ordered ministers urgently to compensate Waspi women nine months ago.
“This is a bizarre and totally unjustified move which will leave everyone asking what the point of an ombudsman is if ministers can simply ignore their decisions. It feels like a decision that would make the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump blush.
“The idea that an ‘action plan’ to avoid such mistakes in future should be the result of a six-year Ombudsman’s investigation is an insult both to the women and to the PHSO process.
“An overwhelming majority of MPs back Waspi’s calls for fair compensation and all options remain on the table. Parliament must now seek an alternative mechanism to force this issue on to the order paper so justice can be done.”
Reacting to the news, a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said: “Today is a day of shame for the Government.
“The new Government has turned its back on millions of pension-age women who were wronged through no fault of their own, ignoring the independent Ombudsman’s recommendations, and that is frankly disgraceful.”
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A DWP spokesperson said: “Introducing such a scheme is neither fair nor feasible and would not represent good value for taxpayers. Therefore, no financial compensation scheme will be set up.”
Labour’s decision to not put forward a Waspi compensation schemes comes shortly after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to means-test Winter Fuel Payments.
Up until this year, the allowance offered every pensioner up to £300 in energy bill support during the winter months.
Going forward, pensioners will now need to be in receipt of means-tested support from the DWP, such as Pension Credit.
