The organisation Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI), colloquially called ‘WASPI Women’, has been campaigning since 2015 to bring attention to the manner in which the state retirement pension age for women was raised at such short notice that it disadvantaged estimated 3.8 million women. The State Pension Act of 1995 included a provision to raise the official retirement age for women from 60 to 65 then later to 66 to match that for men. However, notifications of this for women born between 6th of April 1951 and the 5th of April 1953 were only sent out in 2011 and then they were given as little as one year’s notice of the impending change (when they were 59). Some women it is claimed received no letters at all stating this change. Women were being told that their retirement age had increased by 4, 5 or 6 years at such short notice that they had no means to add to their NI contributions and were effectively financially penalized as a consequence. In addition hundreds of thousands of women have suffered financial hardship because they had no time to make alternative arrangements for their pensions.
Last week the WASPI women’s campaign was vindicated when the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) released her report which states that women born in the 1950’s were indeed unfairly treated by the Department of Work and Pensions. She said that they were let down by the DWP by the lack of notice given for their state retirement age. The PHSO after investigating many complaints over a number of years concluded that the DWP did not communicate changes to women’s state pension age properly and even as late as 2006 many women born in the 1950’s though their retirement age would be 60.
In 2014 there were changes made to National Insurance qualifying years in order for an individual to obtain a full state pension, however, the PHSO report found that communication of these changes by the DWP failed to use published research to correct this lack of awareness.
The PHSO in her conclusions in the report stated that when they find injustices because of organizational failings, such as they concluded from the complaints by the WASPI women against the DWP, the guilty parties usually accept and act on their findings. In this case, though, the DWP has given no indication it is willing to do so. The complainants have asked for financial compensation for their loss as a result of the DWP past performance with respect to women and their pensions. By not accepting blame one can only conclude that the DWP is avoiding making payments of compensation for its past errors. It is now for Parliament to decide about how to proceed if the DWP are not accepting culpability. We await their deliberations and hopefully there will be some justice dispensed to the WASPI women and all those women who have suffered from this debacle.
by Ian Smith
April 2024
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