WASPI Tale Still Stings
Women hit by rises in the state pension age should be compensated, says Paul Lewis
Many women born in the 1950s suffered lost opportunities and financial difficulties because of maladministration by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and should be paid an “appropriate remedy” – perhaps between £1,000 and £2,950 – for the hardship caused. Those were the findings of a report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman published in March after a seven-year wait. Ombudsman Rob Behrens found that the DWP failed to tell the women in good time that their state pension age was being raised from 60 to 65 by 2020 or that a further change would raise it to 66 by 2018.
It did send letters to many women, but many more claimed the first they knew about the change was shortly before they turned 60. By then some had already given up work or arranged their finances assuming their state pension would begin at age 60.
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The Ombudsman could only look at the effects of the maladministration, not at the policy of raising state pension age passed by Parliament. He estimated that for most women affected, a payment of between £1,000 and £2,950 was appropriate. He admitted that not all the 3.6 million women born in the 1950s would have suffered – some knew about the changes, others did not suffer hardship – but it would be impossible to assess individually all those potentially affected, so he recommended Parliament should set up a scheme for a flat-rate payment to them all.
That is far less than campaigners have demanded: Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) wanted £10,000 each; another group, CEDAWinLAW, is raising money for a court challenge to demand “full restitution” of the pension they would have had from the age of 60 – possibly around £50,000 each.
Those demands may seem unrealistic but the Ombudsman payments, costing between £3.5 billion and £10 billion, might not be – especially as women can now wave this report at MPs and parliamentary candidates and remind them that a general election is just months away.
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For more information, the report Women’s State Pension Age: Our Findings on Injustice and Associated Issues is at ombudsman.org.uk