PENSIONSANDSAVINGS.COM

• Government disappoints millions of WASPI women. 
• Government refuses to pay any of them anything, despite parliamentary ombudsman findings of maladministration. 
• Many are in serious hardship and I would have liked to see them helped. 
• But after taking away winter fuel payments with no notice from the poorest pensioners, clearly pensioners are not a priority.
  

The Government has today disappointed millions of women in their mid-sixties and early seventies.

Government rejects Parliamentary Ombudsman The so-called WASPIs (Women Against State Pension Inequality), born in the 1950s, have campaigned for years for compensation, believing they were unfairly treated when their state pension age was increased from 60 to 65 and then to 66, with inadequate warning. After losing court cases that claimed they were discriminated against, they appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about maladministration and he found in their favour. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9967/

Government says it can’t afford to pay billions to these women to compensate for state pension age rises:  The Ombudsman’s March report recommended possible compensation of £1000 to £3000 each, to compensate for maladministration during the years around 2005, even though most of them did not suffer direct financial losses. I never believed this recommendation was likely to happen, as it would cost £3.5 to £10.5 billion and the Government announced today that will not pay a penny to any of them to recognise the problems. After the Chancellor’s terrible decision to take Winter Fuel Payments away from almost all pensioners, including the very poorest who do not receive Pension Credit, it has been clear that there is little sympathy for pensioners, who are simply not a priority for public spending.

Parliamentary Ombudsman suspected Government would reject his Report: When producing his Report in March, the Parliamentary Ombudsman took the unusual step of laying it directly in Parliament, because the DWP has never accepted it did anything seriously wrong or even apologised, let alone offered any compensation. He was right to believe there would be resistance to his recommendations.

I never favoured compensating every WASPI woman, but believe a hardship fund or early Pension Credit access would have been right: I do believe this issue was handled dreadfully by DWP in the years between 2004 and 2009. When I was Pensions Minister, I tried to persuade fellow Ministers in 2015-2016 to recognise that there had been maladministration and establish some kind of hardship scheme that women worst affected could claim from.  I also suggested perhaps using early access to Pension Credit as a possible way forward for means-tested help. But there was no support for this. I never supported paying money to everyone affected. I am a WASPI woman and would not want taxpayers to compensate me personally because I knew about it.  However, I do believe there is a strong moral case for the worst affected women, who have suffered serious hardship, to claim on a case-by-case basis. Sadly this, too, has been rejected by the Government.

Government response admits that about a quarter of the women affected first did not know their state pension age was going to be rising: The Government response tries to justify denying compensation to anyone, by citing a survey that shows around three quarters of women aged 45 – 54 in 2004 did know their state pension age would be rising.  But this still means a quarter did not and they were not told.  The original increases were passed by Parliament in 1995, proposing to increase women’s State Pension Age from 60 to 65, between 2010 and 2020. The stated intention was to give at least 15 years’ notice so the women affected could plan ahead. That would have been fair enough, but unfortunately the women were not properly informed of this important change to their future life. Even after 2004, when DWP Surveys showed most women were unaware of the changes, there was no urgent communication campaign to tell them. Indeed letters were written telling them how much they might get from their State Pension, without telling them they would not receive anything at age 60.

Some women were badly affected, having expected their pension at age 60 and stopped work: At the time the second rises in State Pension age were being pushed through Parliament in 2011, I campaigned to slow down the changes.  Women wrote to me explaining how they had made careful plans, giving up work to care for loved ones, calculating that their savings could last them until their state pension age, but that they would run out of money if the age was increased at such short notice and they could not go back to work now, but could have kept working at the time if they had known. The State Pension is crucial for many of the women born the 1950s. They often had little chance to build private pensions and if they worked part-time after having children they were not even allowed to join their employer pension scheme. By not receiving the State Pension they were relying on, many were plunged into poverty.

Hard to see any way forward for WASPI now: Many of these women are ill and had hoped to be treated better. The only way forward now would be either for MPs to insist they are not happy with this decision (I can’t see that happening!) or for someone who is suffering serious hardship and would have been able to make different decisions to protect their finances had they known they would not receive their state pension from age 60, launching a Judicial Review of the Government’s response.